


Anywhere On This Road

by MollyC



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5.04 The End, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Apocalypse, Everyone does horrible things, F/F, Horror, I am not remotely kidding, Lucifer Wins, M/M, Murder, This is a dark fic, Tragedy, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:50:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyC/pseuds/MollyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living with an angel was bad enough; living without one is worse.  It's been a long time since there was any hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anywhere On This Road

**Author's Note:**

> OK, as the tags say, this is a _dark fic_ and I am not remotely joking. See the end notes for a little more detail. If you're susceptible to fic-based trauma, bail now.

He looked into Claire’s alien eyes and said _Take me_ , but what he meant was _Leave her alone, anything, leave my baby alone_. He didn’t have the strength to brace himself against the overwhelming rush of Castiel; he could only endure it, and for a while there was nothing that had a name in any human language. But it didn’t feel like nearly as long this time, before he heard his own voice shouting, “I’ll hold them all off,” and over everything a roaring clatter that formed furious words, _Castiel, you have defied Heaven!_ He tried to cower, but his limbs still wouldn’t obey him.

In a tone that was clearly meant to be reassuring, Castiel told him, _Don’t worry. It will be very quick._

He didn’t have time to ask what that was supposed to mean before there was a moment of stunning pain and then black.

Dean hadn’t spoken to Sam in just over two years when Cas said, “I should go to Pontiac.”

Dean glanced sideways. For all that Dean had managed to persuade him to change his clothes sometimes, Cas still took up the passenger seat like a choir boy in church, sitting straight with his hands folded in this lap, and didn’t seem to understand why Dean though it was funny. “Pontiac Illinois?” Dean asked.

“Yes,” Cas replied.

Dean waited a few seconds, but Cas was, as usual, staring out the windshield like the dotted line was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Why do you need to go to Pontiac?” Dean prompted.

“Jimmy’s family lives there.”

 Dean felt his eyebrows go up. “Jimmy, you mean like your meatsuit Jimmy?” _That poor bastard_ , he didn’t say out loud.

 “My _vessel_ ,” said Cas pointedly. “His wife and daughter. I promised I would protect them, and with the way things have been going...they should at least know how to get in touch with me.”

“Me and Sam left them our phone numbers,” Dean offered. He was less than enthusiastic about going to the land of lake-effect snow in December, but it wasn’t like Cas could just flap away there by himself anymore, not since the thing with the angel-goons in Van Nuys.

“I’d still prefer to talk to them myself,” Cas said firmly.

 Dean eyed the sign over the road, which read _Tucson Douglas Globe Silver City_ , and sighed. “Sure, Cas,” he said. “Soon as we deal with this chupacabra.”

They got caught in the snarl of rush-hour traffic and didn’t make Pontiac until near full dark. It was cold as balls, but at least not snowing and there wasn’t any salt on the streets, so Dean counted it as a win. You couldn’t be too careful with road salt on an undercarriage the age of his baby’s.

Dean didn’t remember the exact street, but Cas did, threading them through the suburb in the twilight. A lot of the houses were decorated for Christmas, but when Dean pulled up to the curb in front of the Novaks’ place it was dark—no strings of lights, blinking or otherwise, no inflatable Santa, not so much as a battery-operated candle in the window. Even the porch light was off, and Dean could see from the street that there were papers taped to the front door.

“This isn’t good,” he said, as he turned the Impala off. Cas didn’t reply.

They got flashlights out of the trunk—Cas didn’t need the light, but Dean did—and mounted the porch steps. Dean pulled the papers from the door and shined his light on them even though the print was big enough to read in the glow from the streetlamps. They were cancellation notices, dated in August, for gas and water and electric. “Don’t think knocking is gonna help,” Dean said, and started patting himself down for lock-picks. “Give me a sec, I can open this right—”

Cas reached past him and grabbed the doorknob. There was a quiet click and it turned under his hand. “Showoff,” Dean said. Cas gave him a pissy sideways glance on the way by, his sword suddenly in his hand as he entered the house. Dean drew his gun, just in case, but he didn’t think he was going to need it; the place felt abandoned.

There was no denying it was creepy, though. Cas walked like it was broad daylight, but Dean only had the beam of his flashlight and what light crept through the windows. It was just as cold inside as out, and the house had the musty smell of a place that hadn’t been lived in for a long time. Dean never got used to this kind of thing. Bloody crime scene, bodies, body _parts_ : fine, no problem. Everybody just gone like they’d never existed? It creeped him out.

They swept the house quickly, finding nothing out of place. There was no sign of a struggle, no bodies or blood, no dinner plates left on the table; it was like Amelia and Claire had evaporated, or gone to the store one day and never come back. The last room they checked was a home office on the second floor, with two desks, each with its own computer. The one that seemed to be Amelia’s was a clutter of papers, books and pens; Jimmy’s was as dusty as everything else but neat, with a flip-calendar in one corner that still showed September 19th, 2008. Dean stood in the door with his hands shoved in his pockets against the cold, watching Cas look down at the desk in the gloom.

“Come on, man, they’re not here,” Dean said. “They haven’t been here in months. Maybe they went into hiding. I could ask Bobby—the wife had his number too and he might not’ve told me about it. What you don’t know you can’t spill.”

“I would appreciate that,” Cas said, but he sounded like he wasn’t paying a lot of attention. He reached out and picked up a framed picture from the desk, and stared at it. After a second he started to set it down, and then seemed to change his mind, tucking it into his coat instead. Dean had long since given up trying to figure out how he did that without dropping stuff all over the place.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dean said. Cas nodded and headed for the door, and Dean fell into step with him on their way down the hall. “We can stop at that burger joint we passed,” Dean said, trying to sound cheerful.

“I’d...like that,” said Cas.

“No, seriously,” Dean said, grinning into the phone as he went up the porch steps. They felt solid.  “No more fake credit cards for me.”

Bobby’s eyebrows were hitting the roof by now, Dean could picture it. “You’re tellin’ me that your angel made you so much money you need to express it in scientific notation, Dean.”

“Dude, you’re the one who taught him to play craps. You’ve _seen_  him roll a hard eight ten times in a row. Stock market ain’t nothing but a great big game of dice.” Dean pushed open the cabin door. It was one of the larger buildings, but the actual door was on its last legs. Hinges. Whatever. But the floor seemed to be in good shape. It was sort of on the edge of the camp, which could be good or bad. 

Bobby made a noise that meant Dean had a point but the old man didn’t want to admit it. “Gonna be tough to fight the Apocalypse if you’re in prison for tax fraud.”

“Hey, no fraud here. All the accounts are gonna pay their taxes like good little boys.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling for obvious holes. There weren’t any. “OK, this looks pretty good, once we have time to get the dust out. But what’s with the sign?”

“What, on the fence? It’s a joke.”

“Spell it out for me.”

“Well, like that hippie place in upstate New York, only our version’s where you go when you’re up the creek without a paddle,” Bobby said.

Dean frowned. “That isn’t funny.”

“Jokes never are when you have to explain ‘em,” Bobby snapped, and hung up on him.

Once they had an actual base to point people at, Dean did. Or at least, Bobby did, because Dean had discovered that a bunch of hunters had heard about Sam and his part in letting Lucifer out—how, he wasn’t sure, but the monsters had their own grapevine and hunters listened to it when they could. So saying he was Dean Winchester didn’t always go real well right off unless they were warned in advance. And no one was staying in Chitaqua all the time, not even Dean and Bobby, but they worked out a schedule so that someone was always there. It was weird to have a place he was responsible for upkeep on.

Cas and Bobby spent most of a week working on a design for the wards to supplement what the camp already had. When they were done it was a collection of sigils that had to be carefully painted on specific parts of the border fence in—of course—blood.

“Why is it that every spell you do, someone ends up bleeding?” Dean grumbled as Cas dipped a paintbrush into the bowl he held. They were only halfway through the job and his arms had started aching an hour ago.

Cas gave him a sideways look before he turned his attention to the fence. “Do you want the lecture on magical resonances? I think I can explain enough of the basic theory in a day or so.” 

Dean snorted and said, “You’re barkin’ up the wrong Winchester for that kind of crap, dude.”

“Then you’re going to have to be satisfied with ‘because’.”

Dean watched him draw another tiny, elaborate sigil. “This is gonna be a huge pain in the ass to maintain.”

Cas stepped back to get a better look at the overall design and said, “It won’t have to be completely redrawn every time.” 

“You better teach a couple people how to maintain it, just in case you can’t get back sometimes.” 

“It’s best for me to do it whenever I can,” Cas said, though he nodded. “I can afford to lose the blood.”

“That’s another thing. I still don’t like keying it to my blood,” Dean said. “I bleed all the time.”

“Yes, you should be more careful about that,” said Cas, dry as dust. “But we modified the key slightly. It isn’t just your blood. It has to be freely given.”

“I have to agree to it?” Dean shrugged. “One more thing not to say yes to, I guess.”

Dean was just out of the shower when he heard Cas’s voice, muffled by the bathroom door. “What’d you say, Cas?” he called.

“Nothing,” Cas said, a little louder. “It’s—Chuck is on the phone. He needs to talk to you.”

“Chuck? Tell him to hold on, I’ll be right there,” Dean said. Their friendly neighborhood prophet didn’t seem to have a lot of visions these days, but the ones he did have usually led to something important. Dean wrapped a towel around his waist and rested another on his head, rubbing to keep his hair from dripping in his eyes as he left the bathroom.

Cas sat in the little kitchenette, leaning back in his chair like a normal person, which Dean considered a small victory. When Dean reached for the phone he passed it over without comment.

“Chuck?” Dean said.

“Hey Dean,” Chuck replied. He sounded even more nervous than usual, and Dean rolled his eyes. “Um, you might want to sit down for this.”

“What? Why?”

“Just—trust me on this one.”

“OK, OK, I’m going. I’m sitting down,” Dean said, and did. Drama queen though Chuck was, he didn’t usually get squirrely for no reason at all. “Now what...”

“Sam said yes,” Chuck said, in a rush like he thought if he said it fast enough it wouldn’t be true. Dean felt himself freeze. “He, I don’t know why, I’m so sorry, Dean, but Sam said yes.”

Dean blinked and thought, _That can’t mean what it sounds like it means._  “No. You’re wrong,” he said.

“I wish I was. I wish so much I was wrong. But I’m not. Dean, I saw it. He went to Detroit and—” 

Dean hunted around for words to make Chuck stop fucking talking, and when he found them they turned out to be, “OK. Now I know.” He flipped the phone shut without thought.

“Dean,” Cas said. Dean couldn’t make himself say it. Cas got up out of the chair he’d been sitting in and came over to sit on the bed too. “Dean,” he said again.

Dean swallowed, feeling lightheaded, his lips numb. “Sam. Sam said yes.”

They were on their way back to Chitaqua anyway and Dean saw no reason to change that plan. It wasn’t like running away to Detroit was going to change anything at this point. It hadn’t taken long to get almost as familiar with the access road as with the approach to Bobby’s, and he was driving with only enough attention to notice if something ran out into the road. 

They came around the last bend and Dean had to slam the brakes, jolting Cas into the dashboard, to avoid running the Impala’s nose straight into Zachariah. They screeched to a stop with bare inches to spare. Zachariah, as usual, was grinning like a used car salesman, but he didn’t move.

After a few seconds, Zachariah said, “Come on out, boys. No tricks, no games, I just want to talk.”

Dean threw Cas a look. Cas thought it over for a few seconds and then shook his head, slowly.

“Yeah, me neither. Get out of the road,” Dean said. “We’ll talk once we’re inside the gate.” 

Zach’s eyes narrowed a little, but his manic smile didn’t fade and he stepped to the side. Dean drove past him, watching for a sudden lunge, and through the gate. It wasn’t guarded, though he was thinking about changing that. Zach walked up the track behind the car as Dean and Cas climbed out and circled to stand side-by-side. He got to within conversation distance before he stopped.

“This is very tricky, Castiel,” he said, like he was congratulating a four-year-old on a fingerpainting. “How’d you exclude yourself from the angel warding?” Cas opened his mouth but Zachariah continued, “Oh, wait, I forgot. You aren’t really an angel anymore, are you?” 

“Get to the point,” Dean growled. “I assume you have one.”

Zachariah shook his head. “Dean, Dean, Dean, you just don’t have any patience, do you?”

“Outwaited you dicks for three years so far,” Dean said. 

“True!” Zach said, full of fake cheer. “In fact that’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “The answer’s still no. The answer is always going to be no.”

“You sure you don’t want to phone a friend on that one?” Zach asked. The smile fell off his face. “Because let me tell you: this is going to be your final answer.” 

Cas took a threatening step forward, sword in hand—Dean had once again managed to miss him pulling it out of nowhere. “Go,” he said.

“You won’t ask twice?” Zachariah asked, mocking. “Don’t worry, I plan to.”

Dean stuffed his hands in his pockets and said casually, “Maybe I should say yes to Michael.” Cas stiffened where he stood and Zach’s face went slack with surprise. “You know, I could set some conditions, right?” He smiled thinly. “I could tell him he can’t have this sweet ass until he promises to turn you into charcoal.”

Zachariah’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know who I am, after I deliver you to Michael?”

“Expendable,” Dean said. “But now that I think about it—nah. You ain’t worth it. Screw off, asshole.”

“You are going to regret this is so many, many ways. You are a maggot in a worm’s ass and you’re going to _wish_  I’d tortured you to death.”

“Gonna give me cancer again?”

“Don’t be silly, Dean. This is the world you’ve made. You get to live in it.”

“Whatever, are you done?”

“Not quite,” Zach said. He turned his head to look straight at Cas.

Dean never had managed to learn more than a word or two of Enochian, but the first syllable out of Zachariah’s mouth went through Cas like a current. Two words in he dropped his sword and collapsed to his knees.

“Cas!” Dean yelped, and dove for his side to keep him from falling on his face. “Stop it!” he barked at Zach.

Zachariah grinned again, broad and insane, and kept speaking. Dean could feel the words hitting Cas like bullets. He tore his attention away from Zachariah to look into Cas’s face and felt a stab of panic.

Cas’s eyes were glowing, and Dean didn’t know much about angels but he knew it was never good when you started to be able to see their Grace. He groped for the fallen sword and got his fingers on the hilt just as Zach wrapped up whatever his spell was. The guy looked like crap, like he’d aged thirty years in those few seconds, but his gonna-get-you-in-a-car-today smile stayed plastered on his face like he’d gotten stuck that way. Cas drew a shuddering breath and let it out again in a moan that rose quickly towards a scream.

“Have fun, Dean,” Zachariah said, and tipped his head back. Dean wound up to throw and the sword left his hand just as the light exploded out of Zachariah; he slammed his eyes shut and buried his face in Cas’s trembling shoulder fast enough that he figured the afterimages would fade in a day or so.

When it was safe to look again, Zach, or at least the poor schmuck he’d conned into being his vessel, was flat on his back with Cas’s sword in his neck. And Cas was shaking like he was having a seizure. He screamed out the last of his air, drew more, and choked, “Please don’t touch me.”

Dean let go like he’d been burned, and was trying to figure out what the _fuck_ to do next when someone yelled, “Dean!” from inside the camp. He looked over his shoulder to see Risa and Todd approaching at a dead run, armed for fucking bear. They must have seen the light show. 

“Sonofabitch,” he muttered.

The thing was, Cas’s Grace was still in there. He couldn’t use it for basically anything on purpose, but the automatic stuff worked; he didn’t starve, or dry out, or need to sleep, and it still healed him. Kept him from blowing out his voice.

So the screaming never stopped.

Bobby caught him as he was on his way into Cas’s room, needle and vial in hand, and said bluntly, “This can’t go on.”

Dean clamped down on the surge of anger as well as he could, but he knew his voice showed it. “What do you want me to do?”

“He said you told him we had a lead on that book,” Bobby said. “You gotta tell him the truth.”

“Goddamnit,” Dean muttered. This was what happened when he slept in another cabin, Cas started talking to people. “If I tell him the book burned, he’s gonna leave,” Dean said, with a glance at the closed door. “He said...you gonna try’n tell me you don’t remember what he said?”

“ _No_ ,” Bobby snapped, and then made a visible effort to gentle his tone. “He might as well be dead already, Dean, it’s been almost two months and sooner or later we’re gonna run out of morphine.”

“I will knock over every pharmacy in Kansas if I have to,” Dean snarled. He turned away and Bobby caught him by the sleeve as he laid a hand on the doorknob.

“You care about him, son, and I’m sorry. But this ain’t living and you know it.”

It was just Dean’s life that Cas chose that moment to scream especially loudly. He tried not to flinch and failed, and he knew Bobby saw it.

“Dean. You have to tell him.”

Dean swallowed and nodded, and pulled the door open.

Cas lay on the bed, just a sheet-covered mattress; at first they’d tried pillows and blankets but his thrashing always pushed them to the floor and since he didn’t need them for comfort it was easier to leave them off. It made him look vulnerable, like the monster under the bed would get him because he didn’t have any covers. He was curled on his side, facing the door, and he turned his head a little as Dean entered but didn’t manage to make any words, though he throttled the screams down to choked whining that Dean hated. Cas always did it when Dean came in, and because Dean knew Cas was trying to make him feel better he carefully didn’t tell him how much he sounded like he was in Hell.

“Sorry,” Dean said. “Bobby needed to talk to me.” He uncapped the needle as he spoke and drove it into the vial to fill it. He drew the thick liquid up as fast as he could, not being particularly careful about dosage; they’d established some time ago that Cas was essentially impossible to OD.

Dean knelt and set the vial on the floor. “OK, buddy, I need you to hold still for me, OK? Just for a second.” He held the needle up and tapped it. There was no particular reason to believe Cas’s Grace couldn’t fix an air embolism, but all in all Dean didn’t want to risk it.

He could tell that Cas was bracing himself mostly by the fact that he closed his eyes; it probably wasn’t possible for him to get any more tense. “OK. Here we go,” Dean said.

When his hand touched Cas’s neck he started to scream again, the sound tearing past clenched teeth, but Dean had it down to a science; the big vein was easy to find and by the time the syringe was empty Cas’s muscles had started to ease. It wouldn’t last. His Grace would deal with it just like booze or any other drug, and the pain wasn’t really physical anyway. But they’d have a few minutes. Dean set the vial and needle on the ammo crate they were using as a bedside table. “How’s it going?” he asked as he helped Cas sit up.

Castiel took a ragged breath and blinked, making the blue-white radiance of his eyes flash. “It’s not going anywhere.” He sounded thin and worn and even more like he’d been gargling gravel than he used to.

“Don’t waste your breath on being a smartass,” Dean said. He kept an arm around Cas’s back and let him slump against his side. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes.” Cas’s eyes opened and he forced himself up straight, turning to look Dean in the face. Dean smiled—a fake smile but he knew from experience that Cas wasn’t great at telling the difference. “Dean. This isn’t...sustainable.”

Dean’s hands tightened but he kept the smile on. “What, it’s not like we have to feed you.”

“When I mentioned the book to Bobby,” Cas said doggedly, “he didn’t know what I meant.”

 _Goddamnit_ , Dean thought again. “Our lead didn’t pan out.” Which was technically true, but Cas had a habit of seeing right through Dean’s bullshit at the worst possible times, and this was one of them.

“It’s gone, isn’t it?”

Dean opened his mouth to deny it.

Closed it again.

“The place was burned to the ground when they got there,” he said, dropping his eyes. “There was just enough left that they could tell the books burned too. No looting, even.”

Cas made a noise like he’d been slapped, surprise and annoyance and a little bit of pain. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

“You got me,” Dean said, hearing how tired he was in his own voice. “I’ve said it before, man, monsters I get, people are crazy.”

He felt Cas nodding. They sat there in silence for a little while, leaning into each other. Finally, Cas said, “Dean…” and ground to a stop. He sounded like he didn’t want to say it, and that was good because Dean didn’t want to hear it.

“Don’t,” he said, hating how his voice cracked on the word.

“If it were just me, I’d bear it while you look for another way,” said Cas, quietly. “But it isn’t.”

Dean turned his head away, blinking. “I don’t care about him,” he said. “Maybe that makes me an asshole, but I don’t.”

“You don’t, but I do. I have to. It’s part of the bond that we share with our vessels.” Cas stopped, took a deep breath, and went on, “If I had the book, I might be able to fix what the Host did to me. Without it, there’s only one solution.”

“Don’t do this, Cas,” Dean said. He turned back to meet Cas’s eyes. “Please don’t—” His voice broke before he could complete the sentence, but he made himself keep looking.

“I’m no good to you like this,” Cas said. His shoulders were starting to hunch already as his Grace burned away the morphine. “I can’t fight. I’m _worse_  than no good—I’m a waste of resources, and I can’t be fixed.”

"Damn it,” Dean bit out. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to take Cas’s face in his hands, even though soon Cas would be too sensitive to be touched. “You can fix it. You _can_. You have to be able to fix it, Cas, because I can’t—” His voice failed him again, and he swallowed and licked his lips. “I can’t.”

There was a long pause. Dean could feel Cas tensing up, so the smile was kind of a shock. “I’ll try,” Cas said. He sounded almost normal, like he was going to say  _You deserve to be saved_  or _I’m not a hammer_. “But you have to promise me, if I...if _Jimmy_  starts glowing, you have to close your eyes, Dean.” The smile got a little larger. “I would insist that you leave the room, but I know you won’t do it.”

“Never give an order you know they ain’t gonna follow,” Dean said, trying to make a joke out of it.

“Exactly,” Cas said. He was starting to shudder under Dean’s hands. They had thirty seconds, maybe a minute.

Dean couldn’t tell which of them moved first, and the kiss wasn’t perfect; the angle was difficult and Cas was losing control by the second. But he didn’t care. He kept trying until Cas jerked away. His eyes were wide and desperate. “Dean I—” he said, and choked on the next word.

It wasn’t safe to try to hold Cas when the morphine wore off, and Dean knew it perfectly well, but he had to force himself to lay him down and back off. The chair was wooden and not much more comfortable than sitting on the floor would have been, but at least it gave him a good line of sight.

Dean sat, hands clasped between his knees, and began to wait.

Castiel’s voice wasn’t really a voice at all, but it still struck Jimmy as incongruous that Castiel sounded so calm. _I’m leaving_ , Castiel said.

Jimmy would have time, later, to be ashamed of his first reaction, but in the moment the pain left him no room for anything but a surge of hope. If Castiel left, the pain would _stop_. But if Castiel left… _You’ll die_ , he said. He sounded calm too, even as he knew that their shared body was screaming; he could hear it, very faintly, out in the real world beyond the pain.

 _Yes_ , Castiel said. _But you won’t_. He paused. _Take care of Dean. Please. I’ll leave you as much help as I can._

_Castiel. Don’t. Dean will find a way._

_There is no way. You can’t bear this much longer. It will drive you insane._

_Dean lasted thirty years in Hell_ , Jimmy said.

_This isn’t Hell._

_It might as well be._

Castiel radiated agreement. _That’s why I have to go_.

 _I don’t regret taking you back_ , Jimmy said, on impulse but it was true; if he hadn’t agreed to this, it would have been Claire.

There was a long pause. _Thank you_ , Castiel said.

Jimmy felt the angel gathering himself and said, _Is there anything you want me to tell him?_

Castiel hesitated, and in the pause Jimmy could hear another voice, a real voice, saying, “No, you stupid son of a bitch, don’t do this, goddamnit _no_!”

 _Tell him I’m sorry_ , Castiel said finally, and then he moved, in that indefinable way that was _away_ , and Jimmy was prepared for it to hurt but it didn’t; as Castiel left him, the claws of the pain tore free and it vanished. For a moment he seemed to stand in a vast dark space, watching the light that was Castiel racing away from him—or perhaps it was only growing smaller, burning out, and he watched it dwindle, the blue-white angel light fading through gold until it was almost red like a dying star. There was no final explosion, no last grand display; the light simply flickered and died like a spent candle, and then Jimmy was alone. Alone, and nothing hurt, and he let himself fall into unconsciousness.

He drifted awake to the sound of someone trying to cry silently and pried his eyes open to find Dean sitting next to the bed, one elbow on his knee and his hand over his face. Jimmy stirred, trying to get his limbs to obey him, but he felt like he’d been sick for a long time, too weak to move. “Dean,” he croaked, and Dean’s head shot up. He wore an expression of desperate hope.

“Cas,” he said, “Cas, shit, did you fix it?”

Jimmy swallowed and closed his eyes again. “No,” he said. “No, he...it’s just me.”

The pause was long, but he didn’t look; he didn’t want to see how Dean’s face changed.

“You sound like you need a drink,” Dean said finally, just a little too flat to be conversational.  “I’ll...send someone in with a glass of water.” He stood up and turned for the door, only a few steps away in the small cabin.

“He told me to tell you he was sorry,” Jimmy said desperately, struggling up onto one elbow. 

Dean paused in the doorway. Without looking back he said, “Yeah. Thanks.” 

When he was gone Jimmy sank back again and lifted his shaking hands to cover his eyes.

Six days...later, Dean decided he couldn’t keep avoiding Jimmy anymore, especially now that he was up and around. If stuff had been normal, it’d be one thing, but it wasn’t; this was the goddamn Apocalypse and Dean was at least kind of in charge around here, and it was his job to make sure all his guys were up to speed. So he had to man up.

It wasn’t as tough as he was expecting, all things considered. He thought it was a little weird how easy it was to tell that Jimmy wasn’t Cas; it wasn’t just the lack of the trenchcoat, because Cas had started occasionally wearing other clothes even before fucking Zachariah had shown up. It was the way he moved, which was completely different, and the lighter sound of his voice, and he just didn’t give off that aura of...Dean didn’t know how to describe it. _Power_ , or maybe _otherworldliness_ , which was the kind of word that Dean didn’t even usually admit he knew. Whatever, Jimmy didn’t have it.

When Dean got to the practice field, about ten days after, Amanda had everyone doing knife drills with plastic practice knives. She was a lucky find. She’d been a hunter, and she was really, really good at hand-to-hand. Like, beat Dean himself about three quarters of the time even though he outweighed her by a good thirty pounds and most of the extra was in arm muscle. Not that she was a small girl, being nearly his height (and blond, and stacked, and pretty much exclusively into chicks, which was a crying shame as far as he was concerned but that was how the dice fell sometimes), but guys always had more in the arms and chest. He had her teaching the basics first; they could pick the good ones and get into the hard stuff once everyone in camp had half a chance of defending themselves if something really bad went down.

Amanda was busily trying to get Becky to hold the freaking knife the right way, which was why Dean was the first one to notice Jimmy. Who was doing the knife drill, only at full speed instead of a quarter, and with a fluid ease that Dean recognized instantly.

He stopped about thirty feet away. Jimmy sliced at the improvised training dummy faster and faster. Chuck to his left (a hopeless case if Dean had ever seen one but they had to keep trying) and Mel to his right gradually stopped what they were doing to watch, gaping, as Jimmy’s speed picked up to the point that it would have been hard to track his movements if Dean hadn’t known the drill he was doing. Even as he had the thought Jimmy went off-script and started improvising, a flurry of blows that would have killed the dummy ten times over in about three seconds. Finally he slashed a feint, twirled the practice knife neatly from over- to underhanded grip in a move Dean had seen a thousand times, and spun, using the momentum of the turn to slam the blade backhanded into the center of the dummy’s “chest”. With a real blade—with anything even a little pointy—that blow would have penetrated bone. The practice knife bounced off the thin foam padding and Jimmy lost his grip on it, looking surprised as he staggered. 

Dean pursed his lips in a soundless whistle as Jimmy recovered his balance and bent, breathing hard, hands on his knees.

“Whoa,” said Amanda, from where she and Becky were standing, Becky’s own practice blade dangling forgotten from her fingers. “I thought you said you didn’t have any combat training.”

“I don’t,” Jimmy said between quick breaths. He sounded like he had no clue what was going on. “Closest I ever got was tai chi.”

“You don’t,” Dean said. Everyone turned to look at him. “Your body does.”

Jimmy looked up, his face blank before the light dawned. “Are you _kidding_?”

Just as skeptical, Amanda said, “Muscle memory’s one thing, Dean, but that—that was a little more than being able to type without looking at your fingers.”

“Who the hell knows what they can do?” Dean said. It wasn’t like they had any angels left to ask. “Maybe it was a present.”

“I couldn’t do this last time he left,” Jimmy protested.

“Yeah, well, last time he just left.”

Jimmy snorted inelegantly. “Great, I get to be a soldier too.”

Dean couldn’t help the laugh. “Dude, what else did you think you were?”

It wasn’t that Dean wanted to be a dick; he really didn’t. But he couldn’t let people just hang around camp not getting anything done, either, and some of them seemed to go out of their way to screw up whenever they had a chance. Especially with weapons. Even better, he was discovering that he had a couple of folks who could hold their own on the practice field, but choked in real life.

It didn’t help that the government, having _finally_  gotten the goddamn clue that Croatoan was bad news, had decided that the way to fix it? Was to quarantine whole goddamn states. So Dean couldn’t even easily send people anywhere else; the Army had the borders fairly well locked down unless you felt like some serious cross-country hiking and he didn’t trust his problem children to get anywhere but dead if they ran into something nasty on the way. 

Not, he thought, that that was going to be a problem anymore for some people; there was no pulse under his fingers. He shook his head and said out loud, “He’s dead.” 

From behind him, Risa said, “Her too. Fuck.” 

Dean stood up and turned to Terry, who was white in the face and clutching the gun he’d failed to use against his chest like it was a shield. “Nice job,” Dean snarled. “You couldn’t pull the trigger on some goddamn croats, we got two people dead.”

Terry flinched and looked down. “They looked like people,” he muttered.

“Half the things we fight look like people,” Dean snapped. “They ain’t people, and even if they were maybe you noticed we got some serious Mad Max shit going on.” He waved his free hand at the WalMart they’d been in the process of surveying when the croats hit them. It had taken approximately thirty seconds for anything that looked like a US government in Kansas to collapse under the weight of being locked in with a bunch of fast zombies (Dean liked ‘croats’, it was easy to shout), and Dean wasn’t above taking advantage of free supplies, not with the attitude the border guards had. “You got something coming at you, whether it’s a werewolf or a dude with a Louisville Slugger, you _shoot it, capisce_?” Terry didn’t reply. “I said: got it?”

“Yeah,” Terry said, sulking like Sam when they had to pack up and leave another school.

“Good,” Dean said, even though it wasn’t in the same county as good. “You can be in charge of telling Chuck when we get back to camp, then. Make sure you let him know who got his girlfriend killed.”

Terry clenched his teeth and glared. Dean waited a second before he said, “You got something to say, say it.”

“It’s not my fault she couldn’t dodge,” Terry whined, and the resemblance to Sam during his teenage angst period was just getting stronger.

“Excuses ain’t gonna bring Todd and Becky back from the dead,” Dean said. “Gimme your gun, go sit in a Jeep, and when we get back to camp you can stay in your fucking cabin till I’m not in the mood to shoot your useless ass—after you tell Chuck about Becky. Now move.”

Terry looked around like he expected someone to back him up, but the rest of the supply team didn’t look any happier with him than Dean felt and after a second he deflated. He handed over his pistol and trudged to the nearest Jeep in silence.

Dean looked around at the rest of his crew. “OK,” he said. “We still need to find out what’s useful in here.”

Jimmy knew there was something wrong from the moment Katrina came to fetch him from his cabin. Her eyes were just a little too wide, her voice a little too tight, and he groped for his crutches with a clumsiness born of urgency. She wouldn’t answer questions, though, just repeating that “Dean told me to come get you.”

He hurried, too fast on the ice-glazed pathway, jarring his bad foot painfully every time his weight shifted, but from the way Katrina looked he had the feeling it was necessary. And when he got to the open square in front of the dining hall, he realized why.

Nearly everyone was there already, which wasn’t a surprise in itself; Jimmy had heard the trucks coming back from the supply run, and while he had a bye on unloading duty till he was off the crutches, no one else was damaged enough to get out of it. But there were three members of the team that had gone out sitting against the wall of the dining hall with no weapons and their hands carefully in full view, with Dean, Sid, Risa and Carl standing out of lunging range holding guns on them. And Vera, about fifteen feet away and also disarmed, and looking like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to kill someone or cry hysterically, with Amanda watching her warily from one side.

Vera had not been on the supply run, but Debra had. Debra, who was sitting against the wall, pale as milk.

As Jimmy lurched up to the little group, Dean turned his head just enough to make it clear who he was talking to when he said, “Check ‘em.”

Jimmy suppressed a curse. Of all the post-angelic quirks Castiel had left him—he was quite sure his reflexes had not been this good before—the ability to see Croatoan was the one he loathed the most. There was no denying it was _useful_ , but that did not mean he was obliged to like it.

“What happened?” he asked.

Dean gave him a sideways look. “What the hell do you think happened? We got jumped. They’re the ones who bled.” His voice was thin and angry, though Jimmy suspected a fair bit of that anger was for himself. 

“I hate this,” Jimmy muttered.

“Get over it,” Dean said, just as quiet. “And get _on_  with it, it ain’t fair to make ‘em wait.”

“Right,” Jimmy replied on a sigh, and shuffled awkwardly around to face the...it was hard to avoid thinking the word “suspects”. 

He was pretty sure that this had been easier for Castiel, that he had just seen it, like the color of their eyes. Jimmy had to think about it, work up to it. It took him most of a minute, standing there with his eyes closed until he felt the subtle, indescribable shift somewhere in his head that would give him a screaming-and-vomiting migraine if he tried to hold it for too long. When he opened his eyes again, all three of the possible infectees were visibly more nervous, which could be a sign of Croatoan—or could just be the fact that someone was about to decide whether they lived or died.

Jimmy saw the infection like a special effect in a movie, a red smoke-shadow moving on and under the skin of the infected person, covering more and more of them until they flipped. Luke was clear. Bill was clear, though his Mediterranean coloring didn’t hide that he was also terrified. Debra… 

“Fuck,” Jimmy said aloud. He could feel the headache building already but he held the vision longer, to be absolutely sure. The shadow danced over Debra’s face as he watched, making her eyes flash sickeningly, though she was still in control. He blinked and shook his head and dropped his grasp of the vision just for the relief of not having to watch the infection swirl on her skin any longer. “Fuck,” he repeated, helplessly angry.

“Who?” Dean demanded. 

Jimmy closed his eyes again, because Dean was right that it was cruel to make them wait, but he couldn’t look at her face when he said, “Debra.” 

“No!”

The word sounded like it was being torn from Vera’s throat. Jimmy turned his head to look just in time to see Amanda grab her. She fought the hold without looking, staring at Jimmy instead. “No,” she said again.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. He felt sick, and he wasn’t sure it was just aftereffects of the angel-sight.

Dean barked, “Luke, Bill, up. Deb, stay where you are.”

In the corner of his eye Jimmy saw the movement of the two men edging out of Debra’s reach, but he couldn’t look away from Vera, who was crying; she didn’t seem to care—or, possibly, notice. “You’re wrong,” she said.

Jimmy swallowed and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Vera,” he said miserably. Next to him, Dean said, “You need a minute?” Jimmy didn’t hear Debra’s response. 

He had to reconstruct the order of events later. 

Vera shouted her lover’s name and wrenched abruptly free of Amanda’s hold, lunging for Dean. As Jimmy threw his weight forward, Debra exclaimed, “Baby, no!” and suddenly moved in Jimmy’s peripheral vision. He crashed into Vera right before she hit Dean and they both went down in a tumble of limbs and crutches. And then there was the sound of the shot, sharp and painfully loud. 

Jimmy didn’t hear Debra’s body hit the ground because he and Vera struck at pretty much the same moment. His broken foot flared excruciatingly and he bit down on a scream. Vera flailed at him, too frenzied to do real damage. “Let me go!” she wailed.

Amanda threw herself down beside them and latched on to Vera’s arm again. “Vera. Vera, calm down, calm down, come on. Vera!” 

“You killed her!” Vera shrieked, and Jimmy flinched, but she wasn’t looking at him; she was staring over his shoulder. Jimmy turned his head enough to see Dean. 

“Croats killed her,” Dean said roughly. “You need to go get drunk.” 

Vera stopped struggling so abruptly it was like a switch had been flipped. Amanda blinked but didn’t let go. The tears still wet on her face, Vera said with perfect, chilling calm, “I am going to kill you.” 

Dean smiled, thin and entirely without humor. “Badder’n you have tried, sweetheart, but you give it your best shot.”

He turned and strode away, issuing orders as he went, and the last thing Jimmy heard him say was, “Someone get some gas out here and burn the blood.”

At least the weather had cleared up a little.

Back in the day, Jimmy might have thought of that as a small blessing. But he didn’t believe in blessings anymore, so he squinted into the watery spring sunlight and tried not to think too much.

No one had really believed Dean was going to go through with it, especially after he’d started his series of “combat refresher courses” in mid-January. Now, Jimmy wondered how he’d missed that they weren’t for refreshing anything; they were for evaluation. And he was trying very hard not to feel guilty about how devastatingly relieved he’d been when he realized he’d passed.

When Dean had made the announcement, Jimmy had had the sudden urge to volunteer to go with them, at least until they found somewhere else, but there was no way of knowing how far they’d have to go to find a community willing to take them in...and he had a feeling Dean wouldn’t react well to the suggestion anyway.

There were sixteen people in the failed group, including all of the children. Jimmy suspected that a parent would have had to be very good indeed to hold up against Dean’s increasingly mission-driven mindset, and none of them had Jimmy’s own unfair advantages.

Dean was checking their packs, ostensibly to make sure they had enough supplies. He gave each person a smile and a handshake, but Jimmy didn’t think he was the only one who noticed that Dean’s easy charm was wearing thin; only Rob and Joseph smiled back. The little group huddled together as Dean finished checking Priya’s pack. He stepped back to address everyone.

“OK, you guys know where to head, right?” Steve nodded, holding up the marked map with the locations of all the settlements within the patrol’s range. “Stick together, keep moving, keep a watch at night, you’ll be fine.”

Everyone started to nod, but the collective motion was cut short when Maria, standing a little apart from the rest of the exiles, snorted. Dean turned his head to her so smoothly Jimmy almost couldn’t tell how surprised he was. “You got something to say?”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t planning to say anything, no.”

Dean looked her up and down. “If you have something to say, say it.”

She smiled at him, edged. “You’re literally not the boss of me anymore, Dean. I don’t have to listen to you.” 

Dean stepped a little closer, and suddenly, without him visibly doing anything, it was obvious just how much bigger than Maria he was. “Still wanna hear it.” 

Maria didn’t look intimidated, but she shrugged again and said, “Just, I think it’s funny that you’re telling us we’re gonna be OK when you know we’re not. We’re gonna die slow and it’s not going to matter to anyone, least of all you.”

Dean’s eyes were hooded, considering. Jimmy, staring at his profile, didn’t see the motion until Dean had his gun out and pointed at Maria’s head. Everyone tensed up. “I can make it quick,” Dean said.

What was terrifying, Jimmy thought as though from a great distance, was that it wasn’t a threat. It was just...an offer.

Though there was a limit to how pale Maria could get, she reached it so quickly that Jimmy thought she might faint; still, her voice barely shook. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Your choice,” Dean said, lowering the gun—but he didn’t put it away, nor did Jimmy see the tiny movement that would be putting the safety back on. “You better get going,” Dean went on. “Gets dark early.”

For a second, things seemed to balance, and Jimmy had the oddest feeling that they were all looking at _him_ , even Maria, like somehow there was a decision that was his to make. His eyes moved back to Dean again and he found that Dean was watching him too.

Jimmy nodded, a dip of his chin, and the feeling of tension broke; the group of exiles seemed to slump and one by one they all turned away from the gate. He knew that once they were out of sight they’d never find the place again—they’d been excluded from the wards already, the knowledge of how to do that another of Castiel’s dubious gifts.

“Luke,” Dean said quietly. “Take your team and shadow them till they’re out of range.”

“Yessir,” Luke said.

Dean could tell it was Jimmy shouting from halfway across camp, and he didn’t have to get much closer to be able to make out words: “How many fucking times do I have to explain this to you, you _stupid fuck_.” Dean grimaced and ran a little faster. As a rule, Jimmy was a pretty laid-back guy; he hated living here, but he was quiet about it, and did what he was told, and he was good enough that Dean couldn’t afford to either lose him to a fight or have to make it clear that he wasn’t going to kick the guy out.

He skidded around the last cabin to find Jimmy standing in front of the mess hall, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists and his face twisted into a murderous glare. About ten feet away, Liz was glaring back, her arms folded across her chest. 

“I’m not actually an idiot,” she spat. “None of us are. Do you really think you’re fooling anyone, _Castiel_?” 

Because Dean was already running, he managed to intercept Jimmy before he could wrap his hands around Liz’s neck; he hit him from the side and used the momentum to spin the other man into the side of the mess hall with his arm across Jimmy’s chest. 

“Let me go, Dean,” Jimmy gritted. Dean held his breath for a second.

“No,” he said, when he could. “You’re better’n her and you know it, I’m not letting you at her when you’re this pissed. You’ll break something.” For that matter, if Jimmy _really_ wanted to get loose he could; he was actually a little stronger than Dean these days and he won more of their sparring contests than he lost. He and Amanda were the only ones who could really keep up with each other, which Dean had given up resenting.

Jimmy glared at him and Dean looked back until he felt the fighting readiness melt out of the other man’s body. He held on a few seconds longer to make his point before he stepped back and turned to Liz, who’d watched the whole thing with wide, fascinated eyes. A couple other people stood around, coming out of the mess or going in, and Dean couldn’t blame them; this was probably the most interesting thing that’d happened in Chitaqua all freaking week.

“I’m not an idiot either,” Dean said, casually. Liz blinked, confused. “I keep track of the stuff people say when they think I’m not around. So I’m gonna put some stuff in small words for you right now.” He stepped over to Liz, right in her face; she swallowed but didn’t back up, which Dean had to give her points for. “Cas is _dead_ ,” he said, slow and clear. “Jimmy here, he’s got some stuff Cas left him, but he isn’t Cas. Cas is gone, I watched him die.” Liz swallowed again and jerked her chin down in a nod. Dean smiled at her and watched her face get paler. Gently, he went on, “And even before that, well, you ever have an uncle or something you didn’t want to be related to? Because if you did, you get why I’m going to fucking shoot the next asshole who says the words _Lucifer’s brother_  where I can hear ‘em, _do I make myself clear_?” 

Liz nodded again.

“What?” Dean asked, still smiling. 

“Yes,” Liz said thinly. 

“Good,” Dean said. “Now get out of my sight.”

She went, though she got more points for not actually running. 

Everyone who was standing around seemed to suddenly remember they had something really important to do not right there, and in a few seconds the yard was empty except for him and Jimmy, who came over to stand at Dean’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said, sounding a little dry. “I’m not sure you actually needed to make her wet her pants, but I guess it made the point.” 

Dean shrugged.

Marcus was on duty and Chuck was out, so there was no one to hear Jimmy swearing. He stood in the center of the main room with his eyes squeezed shut and his hands in fists at his sides, chanting “Fuck, fuck, fuck” like it could make him feel better, because if he let himself move he was going to punch something and that couldn’t end well for his hand. He kept it up till his voice roughened, and then realized that that _did_  make him feel better and he shouted “ _Fuck_!” one last time. 

Nothing broke the silence but the sound of his breathing for about thirty seconds, but then Chuck said tentatively, “You heard about Bobby.” 

“God _damn_ it, yes,” Jimmy snapped, and turned to see the writer hovering near the door like he was about to make a run for it. Jimmy pulled in a breath and let it out again. “Sorry. Yes, I heard about Bobby.”

“It’s OK,” Chuck said, with a helpless gesture. “I know you guys were friends.” 

“Yeah, but we’re friends too,” Jimmy said, and went over to their swaybacked couch to drop onto it. “I shouldn’t...take it out on you.” 

Chuck padded across the room to the milk crate that served as liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle, holding it up in invitation. Jimmy shook his head. “Crappy way to die,” Chuck said, as he untwisted the cap.

“Are there any good ones?” Jimmy asked. “At least it was clean.”

Chuck paused. “Wait, what did you hear?” 

Jimmy frowned and said, “Dean told me some looters caught him alone.” 

“That’s not what Amanda said,” Chuck said, his fingers working nervously on the neck of the bottle. Jimmy put up his eyebrows and Chuck shrugged. “She said...she said he was possessed, and after they exorcised it he told them he was infected and...” 

There was no point in asking what Bobby could have been infected with, or what Dean would have had to do about it. Jimmy let himself sag into the couch and tipped his head back. “Goddamnit Dean,” he said wearily.

“He was probably trying to make you feel better?” Chuck said as he poured into a tumbler.

“Bang-up job,” Jimmy muttered. “I wonder if he’s really dense enough to think I wasn’t gonna hear about this.” He opened his eyes, studying the grey beams of the ceiling.

“C’mon, you know what Dean’s like, C—Jimmy,” Chuck said, and then winced. “I’m sorry, it’s just, the face.”

“It was my face first,” Jimmy said, too tired to make it bitter. “It was my _life_  first.”

“I know,” Chuck said. “I mean, it never got published but I wrote about you. I was gonna call it _The Rapture_.” He took a long swallow of his drink. 

Jimmy snorted. “You mean a huge lie about how God would save us? Good title.” He heaved himself out of the embrace of the cushions and into the bedroom. Modesty could be a little slipshod in camp, but he at least tried not to undress in front of his roommates. He stripped out of his jeans and boxer shorts and put the jeans back on and then went over to his bed to pull the footlocker out from under it. He didn’t keep much there that was really personal, but it took him a minute or so to move the detritus of random possessions he’d accumulated, books and pens, a deck of cards, his one framed portrait of Amelia and Claire. The glass was still clean and uncracked, but he couldn’t bear to have it out where he’d see it every day.

The coat was at the bottom, folded small. Jimmy shook it out, making a face at the wrinkles, and swung it onto his shoulders. It settled onto him like he’d never taken it off, and the feel of it made his skin crawl. He stood there for a second, thinking, and then swapped his boots for a pair of sneakers, loosely tied. 

When he came back out, Chuck glanced up at him and did an actual doubletake. “What—OK, where are you going?” 

“I’m going to talk to Dean,” Jimmy said, heading for the door before he had the chance to change his mind. He supposed they’d probably start with talking, anyway, unless he made his intentions clear right up front. Which was probably for the best; Dean could be incredibly dense sometimes.

“Uh, Jimmy, do you think this is a good idea?”

He considered the possibilities for a smart remark, _All my ideas are great_  or _Wouldn’t do it if I didn’t_ , but in the end he just said, “No,” and walked out into the dark.

Dean was not in camp the day that Jimmy got back from the showerhouse to find Luke, Fred, Shaun and Georgia in the main room of his cabin. “Uh, hi,” he said uncertainly. None of them were particularly friendly with him, though they weren’t hostile either; they were among what he thought of as the Hard Core, who treated Dean like a combination cult leader and master sergeant and spent all their spare time training, maintaining weapons or discussing tactics.

“Jimmy,” Georgia said, in what passed for a friendly way from her.

He gathered his wits and aimed for a brisk tone. “Can I do something for you guys, or are you waiting for Chuck?”

“Naw,” Shaun said. “We’re here to talk to you.” He smiled, a wide, dopey grin that might have fooled someone who hadn’t been hanging around Dean Winchester as long as Jimmy had; he knew by now what it looked like when a smart man was pretending to be stupid. Though Shaun, unlike Dean, did it by being relentlessly cheerful.

“About what?” Jimmy asked, and headed for the bedroom to stow his shower things.

“About Vera,” Georgia said. Her voice was cool, but it was always cool. Jimmy wasn’t honestly sure whether she and Shaun were siblings or lovers, but they made a wicked double team either way.

He turned into the bedroom and dumped his armload on his bed, because all of a sudden there were better things to worry about than putting his shampoo away neatly. When he turned back around, Georgia and Fred were standing just inside the bedroom with Luke and Shaun at their shoulders. He was suddenly, uncomfortably aware that there wasn’t another door.

In her softly Southern voice, Fred said, “She’s starting to be a problem.”

“I haven’t seen her disobeying any orders,” Jimmy said.

“Have you seen the way she looks at Dean?” Georgia asked. Her eyes were so dark it was hard to tell iris from pupil; it made her stare more than a little disconcerting, which she used to her advantage at every opportunity. Most people didn’t realize she did it on purpose, but Jimmy had been a salesman, back when, and he recognized a tactic when he saw one.

“Vera doesn’t _like_  Dean,” Shaun warbled. The four of them were starting to fan out. “That’s the problem.”

“He killed someone she loved,” Jimmy said sharply. “I think she’s allowed to not like him.”

“Croatoan killed Debra,” Georgia said. “Dean just made sure it didn’t have a chance to kill anyone else.”

“And it’s gone a little past dislike. She’s still sayin’ she’s gonna kill him,” said Fred, still soft. “We’re starting to believe her.”

Jimmy bit his lip. “Well, I wouldn’t say I’m one of her close friends, but I can talk to her.”

“It’s too late for talking, Jim,” Fred said. He was half-surrounded now, Georgia and Fred still facing him most directly, Shaun and Luke to his sides as he stood with the backs of his knees touching the bed. They were all just out of easy arms’ reach and he couldn’t see all four of them at the same time.

Jimmy raised his eyebrows at her and said, “I don’t know what else you expect me to do.”

“We were hoping you’d go over and keep her distracted for a while this evening,” Fred replied.

“You just said you didn’t want me to talk to her.”

“We don’t,” said Georgia flatly. “We want you to _distract_  her so she doesn’t see us coming.”

Jimmy blinked at her for a long second. “You’re going to kill her,” he said slowly. Fred smiled at him like she was his kindergarten teacher and he’d just learned to tie his shoes. “Are you insane? You can’t just kill people for the crime of not liking Dean!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jimmy-my-boy,” Shaun said easily. “Who’s going to stop us?”

“Dean,” Jimmy said incredulously.

“Dean’s not here right now, but you’re right—if he were he wouldn’t understand why this is necessary,” Georgia said. “He thinks he can handle her, and while he’s right, she might get lucky. And we can’t afford to lose him.”

“I hate to break it to you but even Dean is just a man,” Jimmy said.

“Dean is the Righteous Man,” said Luke unexpectedly. His plain broad face shone with fervor. The other three nodded. 

“That’s no reason to kill Vera,” Jimmy said, trying to sound reasonable. “If you’re that worried, give her some MREs and tell her to leave.” Not that that was a great deal better, with things in the rest of the quarantine zone the way they were, but Vera could fight; she’d stand a chance on her own until she could get to one of the other surviving communities. 

“She can’t be allowed to threaten Dean,” Fred said, gently.

“You know I can exclude her from the wards,” Jimmy argued.

“She cannot be allowed to threaten Dean,” Georgia repeated, fixing him with her dark stare.

“She’s not a threat to Dean!” Jimmy burst out. “There are about four people in this camp Dean can’t take without breaking a sweat, and Vera isn’t one of them!” 

Shaun grinned harder. “You know what they say, man: any given Sunday.” 

“You’re not going to help us,” Georgia said. She sounded faintly disgusted.

“You’re damn right I’m not,” Jimmy said. “This is _murder_. You’re planning a murder.” 

“Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Shaun told him.

It took a second to work up a reply to that. “People are not eggs.” 

“Well, we’re really sorry that you feel this way about it,” Fred said.

Jimmy bared his teeth in a smile that wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all himself. “So now what? You kill me too?” They weren’t stupid; none of the Hard Core were. They’d be armed with more than just knives, and he’d lay odds on there being at least two more outside the window in case he tried to run for it.

“We’d rather not,” said Georgia. “You’re a good fighter, and Dean trusts you.”

“You’re going to have to, because if you don’t I’m gonna find a way to warn Vera,” he said, thinking even as he spoke that it was stupid, he’d be smarter to play along and try to give them the slip later, but the thought of even trying curdled in his mouth. 

Georgia rolled her eyes, but it was Shaun who answered him. “Don’t be dumb. We came prepared.” 

For such a big man, Luke could move very fast when he wanted to, and Jimmy had enough time to realize what the movement behind him meant but not quite enough to knock the hand with the syringe away from his neck. The contents burned on their way in and the world drew down to a single bright point in what seemed like an instant, and he felt his knees hit the floor and then nothing.

He woke up to a terrible taste in his mouth, a pounding headache he could actually _hear_ , and nausea that started as merely horrible but quickly escalated to urgent. He managed to roll enough to get his head over the side of the bed (Why was he on his bed? Hadn’t there been things on his bed?) and discovered that someone had helpfully left a bucket there.

There was nothing much in his stomach to bring up, so he was dry-heaving helplessly when the pounding stopped and Dean shoved his way into the room and looked him over in a way that suggested Dean was too used to this kind of thing to be disappointed anymore.

“Whenever you’re done being hungover,” Dean said, too loud, “if you could maybe show up for the patrol meeting, that’d be great.” 

Jimmy clutched for his scattered wits but came up with nothing. Dean’s expression darkened further. “You got ten minutes,” he said, and turned on his heel.

He made it to Dean’s cabin by the skin of his teeth, pushing his way in with a creak of hinges to find all the patrol leaders, Georgia and Fred, Amanda, Sid and Carey staring at him. Amanda looked calm enough, but her eyes were red; Vera was—had been—her roommate. Jimmy’s stomach twisted and he had to stop where he stood to be sure he wasn’t going to vomit again.

“Now that everybody’s here, we’re going to talk about what happened to Vera,” Dean said icily. All the chairs had been put away, which Jimmy resented; he was sure he was meant to. “Tell me again how a demon snuck into my camp.” 

Jimmy clenched his jaw, hoping Dean couldn’t see the muscle tighten. He hadn’t had time to wonder how they were going to explain Vera’s corpse, but it was starting to become clear already. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. Dean gave him a searching look but it was, after all, exactly true. 

“She told us she had a headache and didn’t want to drive on the way back,” Sid volunteered. “So we didn’t have any idea till we were inside the gate.”

“This is why I think we should check people on the outside,” Risa said. She wore her usual blank expression, but Risa was one of the most self-controlled people Jimmy had ever met. She was also very good, as witness the fact that she was a patrol leader without being a member of the Hard Core. 

“Noted,” Dean said. “How’d you catch on?” 

“Jimmy saw it when he did the post-patrol check,” said Fred, who was doing a pretty good job of sounding distressed about the whole thing. “He pretended it was fine, though.” 

“Must’ve been a pretty stupid demon to think you could miss she was possessed when you were checking for Croatoan,” Dean said, swinging his gaze to Jimmy. Jimmy had his mouth open to deny the whole thing when he noticed Georgia, who was leaning on the wall just far enough back to be out of Dean’s line of sight.

She had her hand resting casually on the butt of her pistol. As Jimmy watched she smiled, a small thin smile that didn’t reach her dark eyes, and flicked the safety off. God knew what they’d try if he denied their story now; he’d have to tell Dean later. He shrugged and said nothing. It was their stupid story; they could patch the holes in it. 

Luke went on, “He came and told me. I told Fred to go keep her busy while we made a plan.”

“Amanda was in the showerhouse so I drew a trap under the rug in their main room,” Georgia said. “Luke and Jimmy and I hid in the bedroom till she and Fred came in and when she got stuck we came out and exorcised her. But then once the demon was gone we could see the cut.” 

“Right across her tattoo,” Fred said, with an air of horror that probably wasn’t completely faked. They all depended on their anti-possession tattoos. Even Jimmy had one, for all that he wasn’t positive he, as an ex-vessel, _could_  be possessed; he wasn’t interested in running the risk. “She...she didn’t want to believe she was infected, so we got Jimmy to check again, and then she…”

“She freaked out,” Georgia said, with the air of bluntness she usually brought to telling unpleasant truths. Jimmy had to admire the act. “She didn’t flip, it was too soon, but—I think she was just scared. She knew she was dead if she couldn’t get by us. And she was exorcised so the trap didn’t hold her anymore.”

“We were all in too close to shoot her,” Luke said. Jimmy barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Because the whole camp would have heard a shot and come running, of course. “But Jimmy got hold of her and I had my knife.” 

Dean glanced at him and Jimmy didn’t have to fake looking appalled. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they were claiming he’d started this. “You did just fine without my help,” he said through clenched teeth. He desperately wanted to sit down, possibly with his arms wrapped around his head.

“Georgia and I dealt with the body,” Luke said. “I send Jimmy back to his cabin with Fred to make sure he got there.”

“And he got wasted,” Dean said. “That part I got.” Jimmy bit down on the automatic denial. He’d been drunk enough to pass out precisely once in his life, in college, and it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat. “You couldn’t lock her down till I got back?”

“We didn’t want to risk it, Dean,” Fred said, with an air of apology. “If she flipped faster than we expected, if she was one of the smart ones...how many cabins could she have gotten through before we caught up? People were sleepin’.” Dean nodded slowly, and as Fred lowered her eyes from his she looked straight at Jimmy. He felt cold wash over him.

He had to sleep sometime, that look said, and if he told Dean what had really happened to Vera, he shouldn’t expect to wake up. He had no idea who else had been in on the murder—probably not Risa or Amanda, but they were the only ones he was ready to even tentatively rule out. Sid had obviously been clued in; Carey was less certain. But there was no safe way to go about checking.

“OK,” Dean said. “Looks like we get to have some more drills about not letting your teammates out of your goddamn sight when you’re past the gates.” He glared at Luke, Sid, and Carey; Luke stood up straighter like he was at attention, while the other two slumped. While Dean’s attention was elsewhere, Jimmy caught Georgia’s eye and nodded, the smallest inclination of his chin. She nodded back and took her hand off her gun. “And Jimmy,” Dean said. Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “Latrine duty for two weeks. Pass out drunk again and it’ll be a month.”

“Yes sir, Fearless Leader,” Jimmy bit out. 

Normally, he waited for some indication that the meeting was over, though Dean rarely explicitly dismissed them. This time, Jimmy just headed for the door, as quickly as he could move on legs that were still trying to shake, and yanked it carelessly open. He went through the main square and kept walking, right past his cabin and across the training field, until he was hidden from the rest of camp by the untrimmed brush that paralleled the border fence. He leaned against it, feeling the subtle hum that meant the wards were active as soon as he touched it, and put his hands over his eyes, and shook.

Jimmy hated patrol, and not for the obvious reason. Sure, it was dangerous, but going to the latrines was dangerous; Black Dogs, chupacabras, and other similar monsters weren’t smart enough for the wards to fool and they could, and did, just wander into camp. 

Jimmy hated it because of the way accidents had started to happen, accidents that always seemed to affect people who weren’t enthusiastic enough about the Cause, and there was no question in his mind that it deserved the capital letter. He was pretty sure he didn’t have to worry much; even Dean would notice if he didn’t come back, or came back with an injury and a story that didn’t match what the rest of the team said. But ever since the night the Hard Core had killed Vera, he’d noticed how people who, say, didn’t like Dean’s attack plans? Tended to have accidents on patrol. 

It was better on days when Dean went out with the team; patrols he accompanied had miraculously fewer accidents, and Jimmy didn’t know if Dean honestly thought it was his own stellar leadership that did it. On the other hand, patrols Dean was on were...much more businesslike. Even Luke would unbend enough to talk, as long as everyone kept their eyes open; Dean didn’t, and everyone else followed his lead. 

So they were riding in silence, broken only by the sound of the Jeep’s engine, when the lookout whistled for a halt. Jimmy pulled over, having gotten driving duty by virtue of being the worst shot in the group. 

The woman looked pretty good, all things considered. Her clothes were mostly clean, and the mends were visible but neat; she’d lost the middle-class-American extra weight but she wasn’t starving. She and the child she was carrying on her hip were both of Asian ancestry. The little girl, maybe four years old, leaned mostly asleep into her mother’s shoulder. Her boneless trust reminded Jimmy achingly of Claire at that age.

“Keep the Jeep on,” Dean ordered. Jimmy nodded. Dean, Luke and the rest of the team climbed out, weapons leveled. It would hardly be the first time some bright spark of a demon had decided to try to distract them before the ambush. The woman raised the hand she wasn’t using to support her daughter and waited unmoving, in the middle of the blacktop. There was a long few seconds of silence before she said, “Are you from Chitaqua?” She had a generic American accent.

Everyone but Dean tensed a little. “Yeah,” Dean said. “Who’s askin’?”

“I’m Charlotte, this is my daughter Meghan,” the woman said. “We’re from Roeland Park.” She paused and grimaced. “We _were_  from Roeland Park.”

Jimmy hissed in air. There weren’t any real cities left in the quarantine zone—at least, none with humans living in them—but small towns and suburbs had often managed a surprising degree of coherence. Patrol kept track of them and how they were doing. 

“We didn’t hear Roeland Park got hit,” Dean said neutrally.

“Eight days ago,” Charlotte said. “We...our trading team got back and one of them…” She blinked and swallowed. “We kept them in quarantine for a day, it’s standard, we’re not _stupid_ , but they—damn it. I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes with her free hand, either missing or ignoring the way Sid’s gun twitched at the motion. 

“Demon probably,” Dean said, in a tone of academic interest. “Infect a guy, possess him, Croat doesn’t hit till the demon smokes out.”

The woman huffed out an incredulous laugh. “Oh God, I’m really sorry, it’s just, all this stuff is real. It’s like those stupid books my sister likes. Liked.” The little girl shifted and muttered something too soft and child-indistinct for Jimmy to catch, and Charlotte patted her head reassuringly.

“So why you looking for us?” Dean asked, with an air of getting down to business.

Charlotte sounded taken aback as she replied, “I want to join up. I’m not, I’ve never been a fighter, but—they killed everyone, OK? Everyone. Meghan and I only lived because she had a cold and couldn’t go to daycare. My sister, my husband, all my friends, they’re all dead, and I want payback. I can learn to fight if I have to.”

“That’s what I thought you were gonna say,” Dean said, and Jimmy caught the thread of fatigue in it though he was pretty sure Charlotte wouldn’t. “Lady, look: I’m not runnin’ a kindergarten, OK? You wanna find someone to leave the kid with, then we can talk.”

She gaped at him openly. “‘Leave the kid with’? Like _who_  exactly?” 

Dean shrugged and said, “Not my problem. You got a gun?” She shook her head, apparently dumbfounded, and Dean nodded. “Luke, get me one of the spares from the Jeep. And a couple extra mags.”

No one spoke as Luke did as Dean asked and then returned, handing over the weapon with a faint air of ceremony. Dean said, “This takes nine mils, OK? Safety’s right here. Go north first, circle the city, with only two people you can get across the quarantine line if you’re careful.” He presented the gun to Charlotte butt-first; she glanced at it and then went back to staring at him. “Take it. You’ll be fine.”

Charlotte’s mouth worked but her voice was perfectly calm when she said, “Fuck you.”

Even from his spot behind the wheel of the Jeep Jimmy could see the surprise in Dean’s shoulders. “What?” 

“I said _fuck you_. You don’t get to make yourself feel better, giving me a gun, giving me advice, telling me we’ll be fine. We won’t be fine, you bastard, and you fucking know it.” Against Meghan’s dark hair her hand was starkly white, but she spoke like she was discussing the weather. “I’m going to be lucky if I don’t have to watch something rip my little girl apart, so fuck you and I hope you rot in Hell.”

Dean nodded again, slowly, and Jimmy saw the motion start but he was too far away to do anything. The sound of the shot was huge and deafening, absurdly loud in the open Kansas landscape with nothing to echo back from; it woke the little girl and she started to cry even as Dean plucked her from her mother’s loosening grasp. He bounced her expertly in his arms. Jimmy had known Dean was good with kids but seeing it in this circumstance was too much of a contrast to process.

Charlotte’s body slumped to its knees and then fell. “That’s as lucky as anyone gets,” Dean said. “We’ll have to burn her back at base. Sid, Carey, get a bag.” They both jerked, but nodded, and the team followed Dean back to the Jeep. He opened the back door and set Meghan, still sobbing, on the seat, but instead of climbing in he bent and pulled the first aid kit from under the passenger seat.

Hesitantly, Jimmy said, “Dean, what are you doing?” He could feel Luke’s attention snapping to him, but he didn’t care about that.

“We got enough morphine in here to kill a rhino,” Dean said, as the catches on the metal box clicked open. 

It took a moment for Jimmy to realize what that meant. “You can’t—” 

“You want me to leave her out here alone?” Dean asked. He lifted his head and Jimmy flinched when their eyes met. “We can’t take her, and I don’t trust anyone who says they can afford another mouth to feed further’n I can throw ‘em—all kinds of fun stuff you can get up to with a little kid. So it’s this or I just leave her by the side of the road. At least this way she won’t be scared.”

They stared at each other, and Jimmy could tell without breaking eye contact with Dean that the rest of the team was watching him too. The moment stretched.

Finally he lowered his eyes.

“Good,” Dean said. 

Jimmy barely noticed when the patrol truck rumbled in. For once he had had almost enough sleep and he was enjoying having no reason to get out of bed, though he suspected he’d be routed out pretty soon by biological necessity. But then he could get back _in_  bed; his next patrol shift wasn’t until morning. He supposed he’d have to eat at some point…

He was drifting through a pleasant fantasy of someone having found a cow and turned it into hamburger when he heard Dean’s voice shouting from the porch steps. Jimmy had just managed to sit up straight when the voice was followed by Dean himself, looking about as emotional as he ever got these days. 

“Load up,” Dean barked.

“What?” Jimmy said. “I’m not on shift till—” 

“Put your friggin’ boots on and get your gun,” Dean said right over him. “Days off are officially cancelled.” He paused—purely for effect, Jimmy was pretty sure—and then said, “I got a lead on the Colt.”

The lead turned out to be a note, handwritten in neat, old-fashioned cursive, giving a location and a time and promising “information about that gun you’ve been looking for.” Which was why Jimmy was wedged into the back of one of the Jeeps between Risa and Luke, where he couldn’t even pretend to try to get more sleep on the drive. Not that he would have been able to doze off again anyway, but it was the principle of the thing.

The rendezvous point was out in the middle of nowhere, a crossroads that was flat to the horizon in all directions, and they could see that it was already occupied from a mile away.

“Time’s not for two hours,” Dean muttered. He sounded annoyed, but he sounded annoyed most of the time. He stopped the Jeep where it was and they all checked their weapons before proceeding. 

They parked just outside of the crossroads proper and got out. Dean pushed past Luke’s attempt to go first, ending up at the head of their blunt wedge, Risa and Jimmy on one side, Luke and Amanda on the other. 

There were three beings in the center of the crossroads; Jimmy suspected none of them were human. A redheaded woman with flat black eyes held a painful-looking grip on the neck of a man who knelt at her feet with a bag over his head that had a devil’s trap drawn on it. Next to her was a second man, neatly dressed in a nice suit; he was a little shorter than Jimmy himself, and good-looking in an unmemorable way. He smiled as they approached. 

“Nice to see you so prompt,” he said, his accent British. “I don’t like to say it looks paranoid or anyth—” 

“Who the hell are you?” Dean demanded. 

The man raised his eyebrows. “Guess we’re just getting right down to business, then. Americans, always in such a hurry. I’m Crowley.” His eyes went red for a long second. Jimmy sucked in a surprised breath and the demon gave him a sardonic smile. “Yes, that Crowley.” 

“If this is some kind of trap, you’re going with us,” Dean growled.

Crowley shrugged and said, “No traps, no tricks. I’m here to offer you a deal.” 

“No one’s selling any souls,” Dean said. 

“I don’t want your souls,” Crowley retorted. “I want Lucifer dead.” The guy with the bag mumbled something that might have been ‘traitor’ and Crowley casually kicked him without looking away from Dean. 

It was Dean’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Why the hell would you want your own boss dead?” he asked.

“Well, two reasons,” Crowley said. He sounded conversational, even amiable, but there was something in his body language that made Jimmy think he was scared. “One is: he is my boss. Right now I run the crossroads, and that’s as good as it’s ever going to get unless there’s...a shakeup in the management structure, shall we say.”

“Why does it not surprise me that demons get promoted like Klingons,” Dean said. “OK, and two?”

“Two, until you morons managed to start the Apocalypse, I was in sales, and I was good at it.” Crowley made a sour face. “These days, there’s no challenge to it. People will sell their souls for a bullet. A literal bullet. That’s the ones who don’t want me to cure their dearly beloved’s case of Croatoan, which I can’t do; against the rules, you know.”

Dean studied him for a few seconds and then said, “Bullshit. We’re leaving.” 

Crowley let them get almost back to the Jeep before he said, just loud enough to be heard, “Lucifer hates us.” 

Dean stopped and turned. “Come again?” 

The demon spread his hands. “You seem to forget, Lucifer isn’t a demon. He’s an angel, and if you think he hates humanity? Imagine what he feels about _us_.”

“He created you,” Jimmy said. Dean glanced at him, but it didn’t seem to be disapproving. 

“He created us to be servants. Cannon fodder. Once he exterminates humankind, which you have to admit it looking likely...we’re next.” His smile looked strained, and at the same time more real than it had before. “It’s pure self-interest, I assure you.”

“That’s more like it,” Dean said. “So you have the Colt.”

“I do.”

“Hand it over.” 

Crowley glanced at the sky as if for strength and said, “I’m sorry, I had forgotten that I’m dealing with someone who’s a functional moron on his best day.” Risa and Luke bristled. “I didn’t bring it _with_ me.”

“Then what deal are you expecting to make?” Dean asked, ignoring the insult entirely. 

“My friend here—” Crowley kicked the bagged demon again “—happens to know a great deal about where His Royal Devilishness is going to be for the next little while. So you take him home with you, and once you’ve got a target, I’ll give you the gun.” 

Dean was opening his mouth to reply when Risa said sharply, “Incoming.” They all turned to look. In the distance, closing fast, Jimmy could see vehicles. At least three of them. 

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” Crowley said. He sounded no more than mildly annoyed. “I really can’t afford to be caught talking to you, Winchester, so I’m just going to leave your present here. When you have the location, write on the note and burn it, I’ll get the message.” 

“You—” Dean started, but Crowley and the redhead were already gone. “Sonofabitch. Jimmy, Luke, grab him!”

Dean was too restless to sleep so he took a watch shift instead, making the rounds of the camp in the chilly dark, picking over the plans for the meeting the next morning. He was about ninety percent sure that this Crowley guy was on the up-and-up, but ninety percent wasn’t enough, not with what was on the line. It didn’t help that he’d lost a good fighter getting the demon back to camp, and they hadn’t even been able to bring her body back to be burned right.

Still, in a weird way it made sense that Lucifer would hate the demons even though he made them; they were like twisted versions of angels, the best you could get out of humans. And Crowley had looked legitimately freaked. It was possible he was just that good an good actor, but Dean didn’t think so.

Lost in planning, he was closer than he should have been before he registered the dark shape moving through the area that people called the Auto Graveyard no matter how many times Dean told them to cut it out. He kept walking, pretending he hadn’t noticed, but the shape didn’t turn to follow him and he broke contact almost at once before doubling back. 

Maybe it was a little weird to be able to recognize his own back, especially in this light, but Dean hadn’t had the resources to give a shit about weirdness that minor for more than two years now. He moved towards it, silent on the dead grass, as it bent into the glassless driver’s window of the Impala. He wondered if the wards were finally wearing out; Jimmy didn’t seem to think they could, as long as they were maintained, but nothing smart enough to fake being human should have been able to get past them. 

He already had the butt of the gun raised when his doppelganger moaned, “Oh, Baby, what’d they do to you?” and it wasn’t the voice but the words that made Dean’s stride break in surprise, just enough that the shifter, or whatever it was, heard him and started to turn. He still hit it, but a flash of uncertainty shifted his aim at the last moment and the blow was only hard enough to daze it, not crack its skull. 

Dean straightened, looking around for any other movement; seeing none he bent and hefted his double into a fireman’s carry to take it back to his cabin, where he could _encourage_  it to talk if necessary.

Dimly, in the very back of his mind, he recognized that it was bad that he sort of hoped it would be.

He cuffed the double to the ladder before doing the slash-and-splash, which didn’t tell him anything useful. Then he patted it down for hidden surprises. It didn’t have a gun, but what it did have was a retractable utility knife in the same interior pocket he’d kept one in when he’d owned a copy of this jacket. And a handcuff key stitched to the inside of its flannel shirt. And a couple of lockpicks and a tension wrench in its jeans. By the time he’d checked all the places he usually kept backup weapons—and gotten a hit in every freaking one of them—it was starting to come around, so Dean piled all its gear on the counter, carefully out of its line of sight, and sat down at the far end of the table to reassemble his rifle. 

He was chambering a round when it woke up, slowly, like a guy who’d been hit on the head, and the first thing it noticed was its cuffed hand. Then it looked across the room at him and said, “What the hell?” 

The intonation sounded exactly like him. “I should be asking you that question, don’t you think?” Dean said. He lowered the rifle till it was pointing at his double. “In fact, why don’t you give me one reason why I shouldn’t gank you right here and now?” 

“Because...you’d only be hurting yourself,” it said, with a halfassed try at a smile.

“Very funny,” Dean said, and pointed the muzzle at the ceiling again. 

“Look, man, I’m no shapeshifter or demon or anything, OK?”

Dean eyed it, wondering exactly how stupid it thought he was. “Yeah, I know. I did the drill while you were out. Silver, salt, holy water: nothing.” He paused. “But you know what was funny, was that you had every hidden lockpick, boxcutter, and switchblade that I carry.” The double reached for the boxcutter, winced, and stopped. “So you wanna explain that? Oh, and the resemblance while you’re at it.” 

It made a face and said, “Zachariah,” like the word tasted bad.

Dean stood. If it was smart, it would know that he was doing it to be intimidating, but knowing that and being able to do anything about the reaction were two different things. “Zachariah’s dead,” he said. He chose to believe it, anyway.

That surprised it. “Not in 2009 he ain’t,” it said. “He grabbed me out of my motel room and dropped me five years in the future.”

“Where is he? I want to talk to that bastard.” Talk was one word for it, maybe. But if he could ‘talk’ to Zach from 2009, before he did what he did to Cas… 

“I don’t know,” his double said, looking, finally, a little nervous. 

“Oh, you don’t know.”

“No, I don’t know. You ever figure out how to keep track of one of those feathery dicks if they didn’t want you to? ‘Cause if you did, let me know. I just want to get back to my own freakin’ year, OK?” 

Dean thought it over for a second and hunkered down in front of the double. “Fine. You’re me, prove it. Tell me something only I would know.”

He watched the thoughts cross its face and was almost convinced before it even started to talk, from the way it smirked. “Rhonda Hurley,” it said. “We were...nineteen, she made us try on her panties. They were pink and satiny and you know what? We kinda liked it.”

And _there_  was a memory he’d sure as hell never told anyone about—his dad would have hit the freakin’ roof and Sam would have ragged him about it right up until they stopped talking. “Touché,” Dean said. He stood and went back over to the table to stow a little more gear. “So, what, Zach zapped you up here to see how bad it gets?”

“I guess,” his double—his _younger self_ , Jesus, fucking angels—said. “Croatoan, right? That’s their endgame.” 

Dean nodded. “It’s efficient, it’s incurable, and it’s scary as hell. No one wants to be a zombie, a monster. Started hitting major cities about two years ago. World really went in the crapper after that.” 

“What about Sam?”

Dean knew he should have expected it; in 2009, _What about Sam?_ had still been the most important question in any situation. Was Sam OK, was Sam being threatened, what was Sam doing, what about Sam? But he felt himself slow down anyway. “Heavyweight showdown in Detroit,” he said finally. “From what I understand, Sam didn’t make it.” It wasn’t really clear to him how likely Sam was to still be in there, but it didn’t matter at this point; by saying yes to Lucifer, Sam had finally, unfixably removed himself from humanity, and humanity was all Dean could afford to care about anymore.

“You weren’t with him?” His younger self sounded like he couldn’t believe it, and Dean almost laughed.

“No. No, me and Sam haven’t talked in…” Now that he thought about it, that last phone call had been in late 2009. “Hell, five years.”

It took a second for the younger man to take that on board. “We never tried to find him?”

“ _We_  had other people to worry about,” Dean said, and zipped his duffle bag.

“Where are you going?”

Dean hefted the rifle and said, “I gotta run an errand.” They weren’t leaving for a while yet, but he didn’t feel like sitting around explaining reality to his idiot younger self.

“Whoa, you’re just gonna leave me here?” his younger self demanded, gesturing at his cuffed hand.

“Yes,” Dean said flatly. “I got a camp full of twitchy trauma survivors here with the freaking Apocalypse hanging over their heads. The last thing they need is a version of _The Parent Trap_. So yeah, you stay locked down.” SOP if you saw a duplicate was to shoot the one that couldn’t give the password, and Dean wasn’t sure some of his people would wait even that long. He slung the bag over his shoulder and turned for the door.

“OK, fine, but you don’t have to cuff me, man. Come on!” Dean stopped at the door and turned back. “You don’t trust yourself?” 

“No,” Dean said. “Absolutely not.” He opened the door and went out.

He’d have bet money that his younger self called him a dick before he was off the porch, but Dean didn’t give a single shit.

 Dean’s body language as he ducked around the side of one of the empty cabins was what piqued Jimmy’s curiosity; in camp, Dean tended to stride purposefully, though Jimmy didn’t know if he was consciously projecting the Fearless Leader image. What was actually _worrying_ was that Dean was wearing a jacket that Jimmy knew for a fact had gotten shredded four months ago trying to pull Mel out of a nest of brownies. 

Technically, he’d even succeeded, in that the body had come out of the nest with all its appendages intact. 

Jimmy’s hand went to his gun as he followed, feeling the familiar surreality at the way it had become pedestrian to put on three weapons to go to the bathroom. Even now, two years into the Apocalypse, he sometimes wondered when he was going to wake up. 

He rounded the corner to find Dean at the other end of the building, peering out like he was waiting for an opening to make a break for it. “Dean,” Jimmy said, low enough not to carry but firm, and Dean actually jumped as he turned. 

“Cas,” he said, like a man discovering a spring in the desert, and took a few steps back before Jimmy could get his gun out and aimed. “Whoa,” Dean said, holding up his hands in the universal _Don’t shoot_  gesture. “What the hell?”

“Dean, are you drunk?” Jimmy demanded. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard so much inflection in Dean’s voice, not to mention the use of the wrong name. 

“Oh God, don’t I wish,” Dean said fervently. “Look, this is gonna take some explaining.”

“Then you better talk fast. There are silver bullets in this gun.” There weren’t. Not that mere lying really registered, in the tallying of Jimmy’s sins these days.

“Not a shapeshifter, dude. I just want to get out of here.”

Jimmy snorted and said, “Don’t we all.” 

“Yeah, well, I just need you to strap on your wings—”

“Strap on my...hell,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know where you got your information, but there haven’t been any goddamned wings around here for years.” 

Dean, or whatever it was that looked like Dean, seemed to be sincerely surprised. “Maybe I should be askin’ if you’re drunk, Cas.” 

“I’m not,” Jimmy snapped. “And I’m _not Castiel_.”

Dean blinked at him for several seconds before he said, “Holy shit—Jim, right? Jimmy Novak.” 

“At least you got that much right,” Jimmy said. “What rock have you been living under that you don’t know what happened to Castiel?”

Dean took a deep breath. “I’m from five years ago,” he said. “What happened to Cas?”

“Time travel,” Jimmy said flatly. “You’re seriously going with time travel.”

“You know they can do it. It was that dick Zachariah.”

Jimmy breathed in and out. “What’s the first thing Castiel said to you?”

Dean shrugged and replied, “In English? He said ‘I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.’ Then he told me good things happen, which…” He made a show of looking around. “Apparently angels are optimists. What the hell happened to Cas?" 

Jimmy lowered his gun. “The angels.”

“The angels what?”

“The angels happened to Castiel,” he replied as he put the weapon away, aware that he sounded bitter and unable to particularly care. “When they left...” Jimmy trailed off, remembering, and Dean just watched as he gathered his composure. “Did you know you can take an angel's Grace out _halfway_? I didn't. Can't do anything useful with it, no flying, no smiting, it still maintains the vessel though. And it's painful as—well, as Hell. I assume. I can't actually compare.” 

“Whoa,” Dean said. “You could feel it?”

“He couldn't shield me.”

“That sucks.”

Jimmy just let that statement lie for a second. “Anyway, he couldn't fix it. As long as he was with me, we were both...neither of us was any good to anybody. So he left.” 

It had been a long time since he'd seen it, so it took Jimmy a second to identify Dean's expression as sadness. “Sucks to think of Cas stuck with his dick frat brothers for all eternity.” Jimmy winced and was opening his mouth to reply when Dean—the Dean who belonged here and now—rounded the corner of the cabin behind him and swung, catching his younger self on the side of the head with a stunning blow. Young-Dean wavered and slumped to his knees.

“Why didn’t you _shoot him_?” Dean demanded, so angry Jimmy could actually hear it.

“You want me to shoot your younger self?” Jimmy asked incredulously. 

“If you knew he wasn’t me? Yeah.” Dean stalked across the few feet that separated them, glaring. “How many goddamn times do I have to tell you we don’t have room for mistakes around here?” 

“Like it matters!” Jimmy shouted, suddenly furious. “A day from now we’ll all be dead anyway, Dean, so don’t lecture me!”

Dean’s hand shot out and wrapped around his throat. Jimmy choked and clawed at it as Dean shoved him into the side of the cabin, knocking his head into the wood. Young-Dean slurred, “Hey, lettim go” and Dean ignored it. “Maybe yes, and maybe no,” Dean said, quiet but with venom. Jimmy thought longingly about kicking him, but putting Dean out of commission was a risk he couldn’t take, not now. “But we ain’t dying until I get my shot, you got me?” His grip tightened painfully for a long second, and then he let go. 

Jimmy staggered. He could see young-Dean pushing to his feet, but didn’t have attention to spare for it.

“You got me?” Dean repeated.

Jimmy rubbed at his throat, glaring. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Dean said. “Meeting in my cabin in two hours.”

Looking at them side by side, it was easy to see the differences. It wasn’t that Dean was slightly older; on a man in his healthy thirties, five years didn’t make much difference. But he was also thinner, and something about him was harder—the way he moved, maybe. Jimmy couldn’t define it, but it was unmistakable and he wondered how he could have ever thought that young-Dean was the same man. The younger version perched on a filing cabinet against the wall, while Dean stood on the long side of the table. Jimmy had claimed the chair at one end, and Amanda had forgone the other to lean against the cabinet built in under the windows.

“So after all this time, that’s ‘the Colt’,” Amanda said, making finger quotes. The gun sat on the table, weighing down one corner of a large-scale map of Kansas City.

“Yeah. The one thing that can kill Lucifer,” Dean replied. 

“OK, I was kinda expecting someone taller, but you know what you’re talking about,” she said, agreeably enough. “But we don’t have anything that can _find_  Lucifer. It’s not like he announces his visits on the news like the Pope or something.”

“We don’t have to find him,” Dean said. “My guest from yesterday knew where he is and where he’s gonna be.”

“You know I trust you, but I’m a little freaked that a demon told you where Satan’s going to be and you’re just running with that,” Amanda said. 

“Come on, Manda,” Jimmy said wearily. “You know he’s sure.” She met his eyes and shrugged.

Behind him, young-Dean said, “Wait, we’re torturing again?” Amanda and Dean threw him identical looks of mild irritation and he blew out a long breath. “No, that’s—good, that’s _classy_.”

Jimmy couldn’t quite summon the energy to laugh. 

“Lucifer is here,” Dean said after an awkward pause, stabbing his finger down on the map. “I know the block, I know the building.” Jimmy craned his neck for a better look. 

“Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that it’s right in the middle of a hot zone,” he said, and leaned back in the hard wooden chair. He thought about putting his feet up on the table but it seemed like too much work. 

“Crawlin’ with croats,” Dean agreed. 

“And we’re just going to walk in? That whole side of the city’s rubble, we won’t be able to drive closer than a few blocks.” 

“Yeah,” said Dean. “You saying my plan is reckless?” 

Jimmy shrugged and quoted, “Oh, no, it’s just that she doesn’t like little green worms.” 

Young-Dean snorted; Dean ignored him. “The hell does that mean?” 

“It means, if you don’t like reckless, how about...insouciant. This is a very insouciant plan.”

Dean stared at him with hooded eyes for a long moment. “Are you coming?”

“Don’t be more of an asshole than you have to, Dean.” Jimmy sighed and hooked a thumb over his shoulder at young-Dean. “But really, why’re you bringing him? He’s you. Something happens to him, it could be bad.”

“He’s coming,” Dean said flatly. 

Jimmy waited a few seconds, but no explanation was forthcoming, and when he got tired of waiting he shoved his chair away from the table. Amanda slung her rifle over her shoulder as he stood. “We’ll get everyone in gear,” she said. 

“I want us loaded and on the road by midnight,” Dean said.

Jimmy nodded as they pushed through the door with the annoying creak that Dean had never gotten around to fixing. Wasn’t like he was going to get a chance now.

Normally, before an important mission people were...Jimmy didn’t know quite how to describe it; clichés like ‘pumped’ implied that everyone was happy, and that was laughably wrong. But they’d be energized, working themselves up to be ready. 

No one was energetic as they prepped the vehicles. They didn’t speak beyond the bare necessities; no one tried to lighten the mood. Jimmy watched Fred walk out of her cabin without bothering to close the door behind her and felt his jaw tighten.

He ended up driving by dint of getting to the Jeep first, though he was less clear on how it had been decided that he and young-Dean were going to be riding together. Chuck, looking like he was about to faint with fear, was in the front truck with the Dean Jimmy’s mind insisted on calling “the real one”.

Young-Dean sat quiet in the passenger seat as they got on the road, his mouth drawn into an unhappy line that Jimmy recognized all too well. He twisted a bit to watch the gates receding, unclosed in the dark, and that just made him quieter. Finally, half an hour out, he said, “None of you plan to live through this. Do you?” It wasn’t in any way a real question.

Jimmy glanced at him. There was enough light to see his expression, but not really to read it; he sounded conversational, casual, like he was asking if they meant to stop for snacks on the way. “We signed up to help Dean kill the Devil,” Jimmy said.

“ _You_  signed up to help Cas stop the Apocalypse,” Dean replied, and the raw thread of pain in his voice was almost enough to make Jimmy wince, even after everything.

“Are you two—” He cut himself off too late.

“Are we what?” 

Jimmy wondered how much of this Dean was going to be allowed to remember, and shrugged; if Zachariah (Now there was a person Jimmy would like to be alone in a room with. Him and the Colt.) didn’t want weird time travel problems, he shouldn’t be bringing people to the future. “Are you two together yet?” 

Dean coughed. “Jesus, how much could you _see_?” 

Jimmy laughed, surprised by how sincere it felt. “Not much. You haven’t been having any threesomes you didn’t know about, I swear. I just wondered because you said 2009, but not when during‘09.” 

“Uh, fall. Beginning of October,” Dean said. 

“So that was after the brothel.”

“Oh Jesus,” Dean groaned. He leaned forward, covering his face with one hand. 

“Dean told me about it,” Jimmy said, taking pity on him. Dean, drunk, had told Jimmy every Castiel story he had, one long monologue like a spiky gift that had to be handled cautiously, and never mentioned any of the events again.

“Yeah, all I got is it seemed like a good idea at the time?” Dean said. “I figured he was into chicks. Most guys are.” 

“You aren’t,” Jimmy said, and shrugged. “At least not only. And you know, angel—they don’t really _get_  sexual orientation.”

“Yeah well. Ain’t the way to bet. It’s not like he was propositioning me.” He sat up straight again and stared out the windshield at the taillights ahead. “Tell me what happened to Cas,” he said after a second, in a voice that was trying to be controlled and failing. 

“Dean,” Jimmy started.

“I get that he’s dead,” Dean said tightly. “I get that, OK, Chuck ain’t as subtle as he thinks he is. What I want to know is how.”

Jimmy sighed, sharply reminded of the conversation he and Claire, eight years old, had had in the car one day on the way home from school, when he’d had to explain to her that dogs just didn’t live as long as people did. “I told you what the other angels did to him,” he said slowly, and felt Dean’s nod more than saw it. “There wasn’t...he couldn’t fix it. It would have taken another angel helping him, and they were all gone. There was a book—I never understood how it was supposed to help, but it didn’t matter anyway because the library was burned down. And…”

“And he bailed,” Dean finished.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, his voice wavering on the edge of cracking. They drove for a few more seconds. “Heaven’s closed. Without that connection, without a vessel, he couldn’t...I mean, I _don’t_  really understand it. But he couldn’t hold himself together.” He tried and failed to not picture that dwindling star.

“Did he know?” Dean asked, his voice thin in the gloom.

“We both—we all knew,” Jimmy said.

“Goddamnit,” Dean said, and fell silent.

 They got as far as they could in the vehicles and parked in the gray pre-dawn. There had been no sign of opposition, which was doing a truly stellar job of making Jimmy nervous. The whole area was hot, and a lack of opponents couldn’t mean anything good. They were being allowed to walk in; it wouldn’t be nearly as easy to walk out again. Dean’s face—both Deans’ faces—showed the knowledge too.

 Fortunately it was only a few blocks to the building marked on Dean’s map. They went cautiously, everyone with guns ready, not talking, but nothing attacked them, nor even tried to. There wasn’t so much as a stray cat, and Jimmy could feel the anticipation winding tighter and tighter in his gut with every second that passed without incident. By the time they reached the building he felt sick with it.

Dean gathered them all in a circle outside the chain link fence that marked the perimeter of the asylum grounds. Young-Dean hung at the back of the group, fairly radiating unease.

“We’re going in there,” Dean said, gesturing at the building. “Second floor window, they’ll never see us coming.” Everyone shifted uncomfortably, and Jimmy hoped absently that no one was watching him roll his eyes. They’d already been _seen_. “Weapons check, and we’re moving in five.”

Finally, as if he couldn’t stand it anymore, young-Dean said, “Hey, uh, me—can I talk to you for a second?”

Dean’s lips set but he nodded and waved his younger self off to the side...and kept going till they were out of sight, beyond the ruined hulk of an eighteen wheeler. Jimmy sighed and turned to making sure everyone’s gear was as ready as it was going to get. Chuck clutched his rifle in a white-knuckled grip and only nodded when Jimmy said, “Stick with me, it’ll be fine.”

There was just enough time to get even more keyed up before Dean returned, this time alone. Jimmy cocked his head in question and Dean said tightly, “He’s having second thoughts, so I told him to hang back until we find the big guy.” Then he raised his voice. “Come on, let’s move.”

Jimmy walked at Dean’s side and said quietly, under cover of the noise of their movement, “Don’t bullshit me, Dean.”

At the same volume Dean replied, “He knows we’re all dead, he tried to talk me out of it, I clocked him. It’ll keep him down till the fun part and Zach’ll fix him up on the way home. You happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Jimmy said, as they walked through the gate.

Everything went to hell about five seconds after they were all through the window. The fire escape opened into a big room with stacking chairs and folding tables piled around the walls, and they stood in it anxiously. Dean was just opening his mouth, no doubt to tell them to move out, when the double doors on the long wall slammed open and croats poured in.

Jimmy had time for one shot before their opponents were mixed in among them. After the first shock he could tell that they weren’t as unlimited as they seemed, and everyone who was left was at least competent with hand weapons, but the croats had surprise on their side and that counted for a lot.

He let himself stop thinking, falling into the trance of act-and-react that kept his conscious mind from interfering with his ability to fight. His knife, though shorter than the one his reflexes still expected, was a comforting weight in his hand as he spun and struck, catching the larger fight only in flashes. Jimmy knew from experience that the images would come back to him later, when he was trying to eat or sleep or drive, but he’d worry about that when he had some inkling that there was going to _be_  a later.

When the croats were down, Jimmy took a bare second to catch his breath before he looked around to take stock. Luke was on the floor, and though Georgia was kneeling to check his pulse there was no need; Jimmy could see from where he stood that the man’s neck was at a lethally wrong angle. Chuck had a bad slash on his cheek that he didn’t seem to have noticed yet. And Amanda was clutching her left bicep with her right hand; there was blood welling through her fingers.

Georgia shook her head and stood, catching sight of Chuck on her way up, so Jimmy turned to Amanda. She gave him a tight smile as he approached.

“How bad?” Jimmy asked.

“Pretty bad,” she said, her voice strictly controlled. His confusion must have shown because she removed her hand for long enough to show him the wound: it was a ragged flap of flesh, clearly torn loose with teeth.

“Shit, Manda,” Jimmy said softly.

She nodded. “At my weight we’ve got five, maybe six hours before I flip,” she said. “You can’t afford to lose me yet, but...set an alarm or something. I’ll save a bullet.” She snorted. “Not like we’re gonna live that long anyway, but a girl can hope.”

Jimmy started to say something—he wasn’t sure what, just hoped it was useful—and then frowned.

“What?” Amanda asked.

“Where’s Dean?”

It didn’t take long to determine that Dean was gone, though no one had seen him leave. But none of the bodies on the floor were him, and it wasn’t as if he could make himself invisible. The realization hit the group like a grenade, and for nearly ten seconds no one said a word. Finally Chuck exclaimed, “He _left_  us!”

“Looks like it,” Jimmy said, in a strange sort of trembling calm that he’d only experienced one other time in his life, lying on a warehouse floor, dying while Castiel looked out of his daughter’s eyes.

“Why…” Georgia started.

“He’s looking for Lucifer,” Jimmy said, still calm. “It’s our job to make sure he has time to find him.” All the members of the Hard Core firmed up at that, but:

“You want to keep going?” Chuck exclaimed. “Are you _nuts_?”

Jimmy had his gun out and aimed before he realized what he planned to do, and Chuck couldn’t really get any paler but he froze, staring at the muzzle with wide eyes. “Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not, but Chuck, you have two choices right now. You can come along, or I will shoot you where you stand, do you get that? If Dean doesn’t kill Lucifer, it was all for nothing. We’re only here to make sure that happens.”

“Jimmy,” Chuck breathed, meeting his eyes.

“Pick one,” Jimmy said. “Right now. I don’t have time to let you think about it.” 

Chuck let out a shuddering sigh. “I’m coming. What the hell, not like I had any plans for tonight anyway.”

“Good,” Jimmy said, and turned away.

They made it through two more groups of croats in quick succession, though Georgia and Sid both took bites—which, like Amanda, they roughly bandaged and otherwise ignored—and Liz got her arm broken avoiding another. But no one else died, right up until they pushed past a pair of swinging doors and discovered a mob, bigger than any they’d met yet, and at the head of the group stood a girl.

She was blond and about thirteen, wearing jeans and a shirt cut much too low for her age, and Jimmy would have recognized her anywhere.

“Claire,” he said, his mouth gone suddenly dry. “Claire.”

“Hi, Daddy,” she chirped. Her eyes flicked to black. “Get ‘em.” 

The croats pounded past her and slammed into the Chitaqua group like a wave swamping a boat. Jimmy had to tear his gaze away from Claire to fight, and he knew it was hopeless from the beginning; there were more croats jammed into this hallway than he’d ever seen in one place before. Sid went down in the first rush, choking on a scream as a croat tore his throat out. Chuck dropped only a few seconds later, despair clear on his face even in the bare glimpse Jimmy caught. Jimmy and Amanda fought back-to-back for almost a minute, until he felt her yanked away. And then there were hands on him, and he twisted and writhed, striking at anything he could reach, but there were too many of them—and none, he realized, were trying to _hurt_  him, only hold him, and the thought made him struggle harder. He was stronger than he’d been before Castiel, but the croats had the virus on their side along with numbers. In the end it took five of them to hold him, both his arms wrenched painfully behind his back. They held him while they killed Liz and Georgia and Carey, everyone else who was left, and when it was over the only sound left was his own voice, chanting, “No, no, no…” and he couldn’t make himself stop. 

Claire, the demon who _was not_  Claire, smiled at him across the carnage. “Bring him over here,” she drawled. The croats hauled him unresisting over the bodies of his friends and comrades and forced him to his knees at her feet. Jimmy didn’t have to look up very far to see her face; she was still just a little girl. Not as old as she should have been, not by a long shot, the demon had been in her for years, for _years_.

“ _Ol sonuf voresagi_ ,” he began, and the demon pulled Claire’s mouth into a smirk.

“Do I look like a moron to you, Daddy?” she asked, and hooked a thumb into the waistband of her jeans, pulling them down to reveal an ugly circular brand on the point of her hip. “Binding link. No exorcisms for you, but nice try.”

“Claire, honey, please,” Jimmy said. “You can fight this.” His voice cracked painfully on the words.

“Maybe she could have, back in the day,” the demon said. “But I’ve been living in here for a long time. She knows better than to try anymore.” She smiled and bent, putting her hand under his chin. Jimmy shuddered and jerked his head to the side. “I’ll tell you a secret, though: some of the stuff I tried to teach her to keep her head down? She liked it. _Loved_ it. It’s a good thing you weren’t around, you would’ve had to keep her locked up for her own good.”

Jimmy whispered, “Oh God,” and she slapped him, hard enough that he tasted blood.

“Don’t pray to Him, Daddy. He left you a long time ago. _My_  Father is the only god that matters now. Pretty soon he’ll take care of Dean, and that’ll be the end of that.” 

“Kill me, then,” Jimmy spat. He couldn’t catch his breath. He could feel the trembling anticipation in the croats’ hands on him, but for now they obeyed the demon. 

She laughed, Claire’s charming little-girl laugh. “Kill you? I wouldn’t do that. Clarence and I had a _bond_ , back before his own side turned on him. I just wanted to see the sap who was dumb enough to let an angel in.”

“You can look at your boss for that,” Jimmy said.

Her eyes narrowed a little but the smile stayed firm. “And your boss said no, and look at how that worked out.”

“He’s not dead yet,” Jimmy said. He had to believe it; there was no reason for her to lie about Dean being _alive_.

The smile widened a little, cruel in a way Claire’s face had never been meant for. “It won’t be long. Too bad.” Her voice dropped and she bent again and kissed him, kissed him like a lover, and Jimmy tried to tear free but the hands that held him were like iron. He forced himself to make no sound. At last she pulled away and made an exaggerated moue of regret. “Not enough time. I could have showed you a few things I’ve taught your precious baby.”

“Go to Hell,” Jimmy said, his voice flat and colorless in his own ears.

She laughed again and said, “Oh, Daddy, I’ve already been there. Let him up.” The croats’ hands loosened and fell away, and Jimmy climbed to his feet slowly. The demon stood before him and spread her hands. Her eyes cleared, sea-green, so much like Amelia’s. “Go ahead,” she said, her smirk firmly back in residence. “Take your best shot, _Daddy_. My gift to you.”

Jimmy clenched his jaw so hard he could feel his teeth shifting, and shook his head.

“You sure? You can’t really hurt me. Going once, going twice…?” He swallowed and didn’t move. “Oh well. Your knife’s about ten feet behind you and to your left.” Jimmy was still trying to work out what that was supposed to mean when she vanished.

For a second, no one moved.

Jimmy turned and dove for his knife.

He lurched down the stairs, making a lot more noise than he was happy with even though he suspected it didn’t matter; he hadn’t seen anything moving since the last croat had finally died. As he made the laborious turn on the landing he heard a muffled bang that might have been a shot, but after that there was nothing, like the air itself had stopped transmitting sound.

Jimmy had to lean on the crash bar at the bottom of the emergency stairwell because his right hand was busy holding his left arm still. He emerged into a narrow path between the wall of the building and the fence and turned his head just in time to see young-Dean’s back vanishing around the corner at a jog. “Hell,” Jimmy muttered, and followed.

As he reached the corner lightning flashed. He leaned on the brick, counting on the roll of thunder to mask any noise he made, and peered around.

Windows looked down from three sides into a courtyard. It had probably been pleasant once, with a few statues, a molded concrete bench, and rose bushes, but years of neglect had taken their toll; the grass was brown and the roses had run unhealthily wild. A few were blooming, out of season the way so many things grew these days, but most of the bushes looked dead, too-long branches reaching hopelessly for the lead-gray sky.

Dean stood there, devastation plain on his face; Dean also lay there, flat on his back, and even from this distance Jimmy could tell his open eyes weren’t seeing anything.

And facing Dean, the body of Sam Winchester smiled gently. Lucifer wore a white suit; Jimmy snorted quietly. But _power_  hovered in the air around the Devil like a heat-haze, and Jimmy thought it was probably a good thing that he didn’t have a prayer of composing his mind enough to call up the angel-vision. “Don’t you think that would be a little...redundant?” Lucifer said, glancing down at Dean’s body. Jimmy would have bet a lot of money that the last thing young-Dean had said had been “Well then why don't you just kill me,” or words to that effect.

Jimmy sighed and pushed off the wall, limping out into the open. His knee screamed protest but he ignored it to search the ground fruitlessly for the Colt as he went. Lucifer turned to look at him and the smile got a little broader. “Ah. Not quite a clean sweep, I see.”

Jimmy said nothing, taking up a position at young-Dean’s side, carefully where he couldn’t see the body. He had no idea how long he was going to be able to remain standing, but it’d damn well be till Lucifer was gone.

“You were Castiel’s vessel, weren’t you?” Lucifer asked. Jimmy nodded. “You know, I tried to talk to Castiel once. I tried to explain all the things we had in common. But he wouldn’t listen, and, surprise—they killed him for it.” Lucifer sighed. “Little brothers. They _never_ listen, do they?” Young-Dean, who Jimmy supposed was the only Dean who mattered now, opened his mouth and Lucifer went on smoothly, “I’m sorry. It must be painful for you, speaking to me in this...shape. But it had to be your brother, Dean. It had to be.” He put out a hand as if he meant to take Dean by the shoulder, and Dean twitched back out of his reach. Lucifer contrived to sound hurt when he said, “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Dean—Sam loves you, so I love you too. What do you think I’m going to do?”

Filled with distant horror that Lucifer had referred to Sam in the present tense, Jimmy said, "Finish what you started."

Dean snorted. “Deep fry the planet, he means.” The smartass tone of his voice didn’t hide that he was terrified, though Jimmy knew he’d have been appalled to realize it.

“Why? Why would I want to destroy this stunning thing? Beautiful in a trillion different ways, the last perfect handiwork of God.” Lucifer actually picked a rose to admire. Jimmy rolled his eyes, and could tell Dean noticed, though if Lucifer did he chose to ignore it. “Did you ever hear the story of how I fell from grace?” Lucifer asked.

“Oh, God, you’re not gonna tell us a bedtime story, are you?” Dean said. “Because I’m not sure Jimmy here can take it, he’s looking bad enough already.”

“Mmmm, true,” Lucifer said. He waved the hand with the rose in it casually and Jimmy’s various pains suddenly vanished. He looked down at his hands, startled; they were clean. “You little hairless apes, you’re so easy to fix—or to break,” Lucifer said. “And yet God told us to bow down to you. To love you _more than Him_. And I said, ‘Father, I can’t.’ I said, ‘These human beings are flawed, murderous.’ And for that, he had Michael cast me into Hell. Now tell me, does the punishment fit the crime?”

“Yes,” Jimmy said, right over what he suspected was going to be a much longer monologue if he didn’t cut it off. Lucifer stopped with his mouth open and an expression of perfect incredulity. Jimmy supposed the Devil didn’t get interrupted very often. “You go on and on about how much you loved God—if you really loved Him, you’d have understood what He meant. You’d have done what He asked instead of whining about how misunderstood you were. Castiel is the only one of you who _ever_  got it right, and you have about as much in common with him as a dog does.”

They both stared at him for a long second. Dean recovered first. “Guess all your sympathy-for-the-Devil crap just isn’t as convincing as you thought,” he said. The snark was a little more sure now, and the terror just a tiny bit smaller. “We know what you are. I been squashing cockroaches like you my whole life, there’s always a way and I’m gonna find it. You are _nothing_  but an ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground piece of crap, and the only difference between them and you is the size of your ego.”

There was a pause, and Lucifer smiled again in a way that was meant to imply that he found it endearing how Dean was overcoming his many limitations...but Jimmy thought of his mother’s cat, washing its face furiously after missing a jump to the window sill. “I like you, Dean,” Lucifer said gently. “I get what the other angels see in you. Goodbye. We’ll meet again soon.” He turned and Dean opened his mouth, and Jimmy grabbed his arm.

“Don’t bother,” he said quietly. “Just let him go.” Dean blinked and when his eyes met Jimmy’s they were glittering with tears he wasn’t quite shedding.

“I swear I’ll find a way to kill him,” Dean said. “I swear this won’t happen to you. Any of you. I—” Another flash lit the little garden, so bright Jimmy had to close his eyes against it, and he lost his grip on Dean’s arm somehow, and when his vision cleared he was alone with the rumble of thunder and Dean’s body.

He walked slowly to its side and knelt, and closed its eyes, and bit his lip. He thought about trying to get back to the vehicles carrying the fresh corpse of a tall, muscular man. He thought about the roads between here and Chitaqua, and all the things that might be waiting beside them.

He thought about making it, about driving into the silent camp, past the empty cabins. He thought about building the pyre and lighting it. He thought about the wards, and how long they would last against everything Lucifer could bring to bear now; he thought, briefly, of how long he _wanted_  them to last.

Of course, it was possible Lucifer just wouldn’t bother, for a mere former vessel. If nothing else, there was only so much food in the storeroom.

Jimmy hoisted the body into a fireman’s carry and stood. He took a few steps to test the burden. He nodded to himself and started to walk.

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: Dean kills several people in cold blood, including the implied murder of a small child. A group of OCs plan another murder, which is not shown. And, not to put too fine a point on it, everybody dies. About the only thing it _doesn't_ have is rape.  
>  \--------  
> So.
> 
> Um.
> 
> I have no idea where this thing came from.
> 
> ["Remnants"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2690813) is part of this story; you can probably figure out where it fits in. How something I wrote for a 24-hour porn challenge spawned 20-some-thousand words of Downer Ending is anyone's guess.
> 
> My huge thanks to the folks who did the betareading, and even more the cheerleading; if I hadn't had someone to tell me it was worth the effort, I'd have dumped the whole idea halfway. Which...might have been better? Because _holy moly_ is this depressing.
> 
> Also, yes, it's basically [_Down to Agincourt_](http://archiveofourown.org/series/110651) fanfic. (You should read DtA, if you haven't already--vastly, vastly more optimistic, and also coming up on two orders of magnitude longer.)
> 
> And everyone, everyone should tell TKodami how absolutely fabulous [her art](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4912546) is. I mean, damn.
> 
> I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments. Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YSG4hU8mv8) (and the vid that goes with it is really great.)


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